Darren Lynn Bousman

Handed the sequel to a surprise hit, Bousman directed Saw II and then Saw III and Saw IV back to back, which makes him the person most responsible for what that franchise actually became after the first film. The run is where he built his signature: grimy industrial spaces, hard cuts between timelines, and traps constructed as arguments rather than as set pieces. He came back to the series much later for Spiral.

Away from Saw he has a stranger and more interesting instinct, which is for horror as a musical. Repo! The Genetic Opera in 2008 and the Devil's Carnival films are rock-opera horror made on tight money for an audience that was never going to be large, and they have the devoted following that only genuinely peculiar films attract. They are also the clearest evidence that he would rather make something odd than something safe.

The rest of the directing record is uneven and he would probably say so himself: a remake of Mother's Day, the numerological horror 11-11-11, St. Agatha, Abattoir, The Barrens, Death of Me. Some are efficient, some are not, and none found the audience Saw did.

The most distinctive part of his output is barely film at all. He co-created a run of immersive and alternate-reality experiences, The Tension Experience in 2016, The Lust Experience, Theatre Macabre, iConfidant and One Day Die, which put the audience inside the horror instead of in front of it. He now co-hosts a filmmaking podcast with Josh Stolberg.