Celebrate International Women's Day with these notable female horror filmmakers

Horror is a film genre that has mostly been inhabited by men. As time and attitude have progressed, so have the number of women who choose to write, direct, produce and even act in horror movies.

In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8), The Horror Lounge is recognizing a handful of notable women who love to scare us. And let’s not forget to acknowledge Shudder’s new documentary, 1000 Women in Horror, which will begin streaming on March 20.

This list is focused on filmmakers, so while women who act in horror movies are equally important, we won’t be listing any “final girls” here – that’s for another article at another time.

Akela Cooper – Writer / Producer Akela Cooper is an important newer voice in horror. She co-wrote Hell Fest, wrote Malignant (a favorite of mine) and M3GAN, and co-wrote The Nun II and M3GAN 2.0. She grew up in Missouri, and has cited Pumpkinhead as being a film that has influenced her writing.

Cooper cut her horror teeth in television, writing for series such as Grimm, The 100, Witches of East End, and American Horror Story, and she has appeared as a guest judge on The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula.

Amy Jones – Did you know that the original 1982 version of The Slumber Party Massacre was directed and produced by a woman? Amy Jones was a film editor who desperately wanted to direct a film. She got a copy of the original script for The Slumber Party Massacre, and with her husband, shot the first three scenes of the script at her home, then submitted the 7-minute reel to Roger Corman. He agreed to finance the film, and the rest is history. Jones went on to work on films such as Love Letters, Mystic Pizza, Indecent Proposal, and The Relic.

Women in Horror: From Final Girl to Producer

Barbara Crampton – Most horror fans know Barbara Crampton thanks to her acting work in Chopping Mall, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, You’re Next and Jakob’s Wife (among others). But Crampton has also produced a lot of genre films. She was producer for the Castle Freak remake, Glorious, Jakob’s Wife, and Suitable Flesh, as well as co-producer for Beyond the Gates.

You have to admire a woman who has done everything from being the hot final girl to producing high quality horror movies!

Coralie Fargeat – When I initially subscribed to Shudder back in 2018, one of the first films I watched was Revenge. It was like nothing I had seen before – an exceptionally brutal, bloody revenge film in which the lead actress was a total badass. Revenge, along with Mayhem and The Last Drive-In, are what inspired me to expand my trial subscription to Shudder, and I have never looked back.

Fargeat not only directed Revenge, she also wrote and edited it. Several years later, the world would come to know her as the writer/director/producer/editor for the hit 2024 horror film The Substance. Not only was The Substance a big money-maker at the box office, it also garnered multiple Golden Globe, SAG and Oscar nominations. Fargeat is the first woman to be nominated for directing and writing a horror movie.

Heather Langenkamp – Langenkamp’s best-known accomplishment is hands down her role as Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. She has continued acting, appearing in Little Bites, American Horror Story: Freak Show, The Midnight Club, and The Life of Chuck, but there is a lot more on her plate than just acting.

She has executive produced Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy and I Am Nancy, and she and her husband own and operate the award-winning AFX Studio, which designs and manufactures special effects make-up for television and movies.

Issa Lopez – Lopez is the genius who wrote and directed the incredible horror / fantasy Tigers Are Not Afraid (currently streaming on AMC+ and Shudder). The film is set during the real-life Mexican drug war, and its focus is on a group of children who have been tragically orphaned because of it. Tigers Are Not Afraid was a multiple award nominee/winner, and drew comparisons to Guillermo del Toro’s work on films such as Pan’s Labyrinth.

Last year, Lopez directed and co-wrote all six episodes of the HOB Max series True Detective: Night Country. It ended up with the highest viewership of all four seasons of the series. A check of IMDb shows that she is potentially working on another season of True Detective, and most intriguingly, she is working on an “Untitled Werewolf Western Project” with the great Guillermo del Toro himself!

Kate Siegel – Siegel is a powerhouse who has starred in multiple horror projects, including Hush, The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manner, The Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass…the list could go on and on. She also co-wrote Hush with her husband Mike Flanagan, then took on the starring role as well.

More recently, Siegel has begun to dip her toe into directing. She directed the segment Stowaway in V/H/S/Beyond, as well as the surprisingly gross and very entertaining Down the Chimney short in The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors.

Mary Harron – If you are scratching your head and thinking you have no idea who Mary Harron is, you are probably wrong. Among other projects, Harron directed the iconic cult film American Psycho…and she also co-wrote the screenplay.

I had the opportunity to interview Mary when she directed a series called The Expecting for the short-lived streaming platform Quibi. For those who don’t remember, Quibi was short for “quick bites”, and it featured movies broken into 10-minute episodes. The thought process behind it was that most people tend to watch content on their phones, often in short bursts of time…so, you could watch a segment, then watch another when it released a week later. It was an interesting idea, but it wasn’t successful, and while several of their films were later released on other platforms, some were not. I was unable to find The Expecting streaming anywhere.

Veronika Franz – Though Franz’s films are all co-written and directed with Severin Fiala, she is still well-deserving of her inclusion on this list of women working in horror. Her first feature film was the chilling Austrian psychological horror movie Goodnight Mommy, which was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the top 5 foreign language films of 2015.

Franz and Fiala went on to write and direct The Field Guide to Evil, The Lodge, and The Devil’s Bath. They are also reportedly set to direct the film adaptation of Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, which is one of my favorite recent horror novels.