10 Directors Who Need To Make A Horror Movie

9. Debra Granik

If you haven't seen Granik's second film Winter's Bone, I implore you to pause on reading this post, go watch it, and then return. Not only did it give us the A-list arrival of Jennifer Lawrence but it was nominated for four Oscars and won the Grand Jury Prize for drama at Sundance. Granik's ridiculously talented and I wait with baited breath for her next project.

What she brings is this no-bullshit approach to the plight of her characters. In Winter's Bone, Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, a teenager who tracks down her meth-cooking father (who posts the house as bail and skipped out on delivering) in order to keep her home and property, as well as her mentally damaged mother and two, younger siblings. Sound like a recipe for a bad Lifetime movie? Yeah, I thought so, too, until I saw the movie. Granik's stripped-down approach to the plot is brave and seamless. She isn't afraid to rough her characters up and throw them right into harm's way - even if it's a no-frills act of quick violence.

More importantly, she never shields her characters from at-times horrific realities. The ultimate scene in Winter's Bone comes when, after Ree finds that she has to bring her father's dead body to the police station as proof that his bond no longer stands, Ree is taken to the distant, isolated, unknown location of where her father's body had been dumped. The proof she walks away with to give to police? His hands. It's the most bare-bones scene I've watched in a long, long time: after quietly leading up to this darkly triumphant moment, Granik's rendered you speechless.

I felt like I'd walked directly into Ree's shoes once the story was wrapped. The climax is unsettling in its development that I can only imagine what Granik would do if she were at the helm of a more horrific, suspenseful story.