George Romero is an Iconic horror movie director due to reinvention he made of zombie's making them into the modern brain eating zombie's people recognise and associate with today.His first film to reach such commercial success was "Night of the Living Dead" in 1986 which took cinema's by storm so much so that they have entered modern pop culture. His second film in the dead franchise was "Dawn of the Dead" again a huge success and too this day remain a cult classic and a pillar of horror movie genre.
Wes Craven's input into the horror genre is also significant most notably in the slasher sub genre. His most credible input into this genre were his slasher film's such as "A nightmare on elm street" which came out in 1984 and created a whole new fear for audiences, the fear of sleep which was new and revolutionary at the time. His second notable film would be "Scream" in 1996 which was a nice homage to horror classic from over the year's it also became pop culture for a time and the killer of the series "ghost face" became instantly recognisable and an iconic figure of horror.
Steven Spielberg made an all new fear of the ocean with his horror movie "JAWS" in 1975, this film is renown for having one of the best and original horror movie opening in cinema history.This new horror made began to make horror more real and terrifying due to the situations and animals with the film all being plausible and real. this lead to an increase of people being afraid of the ocean and shark's showing how effective the film was in striking terror into the hearts of its audience.
William Friedkin was the director of critically acclaimed horror movie "The Exorcist". He earn his title as a respected horror movie director throughout his film as it gave a new meaning to horror and was very different to any film before it. Its heavy reliance on atmosphere and mood payed off in making this one of the best horror movies to date, he also relied on the acting in the scene's instead of the horrific appearance of the monster or the gore it create's. In stead the horror is a lot more physiological making it dawn on the audiences mind thus making it one of the best horror ever made. Another revolutionary element this film used was it was one of the first films to play with the innocence of a child and use them as the horror element of the film which was never seen before in film.
Stanley kubrick is responsible for the film adaptation of the novel by Steven King of the same name called "The Shining".This film is responsible for some of the the horrific effects that are used in film to day as it raised the bar in visuals, most notable of these visuals is the scene from the elevators where a river of blood flows from. This scene ended up in the top ten most effective horror scenes on rotten tomato.