10 Horror Movie Directors That Quit The Genre

6. Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In)

The Grudge Kayako
Paramount

Perhaps the most in-demand director listed here, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves cut his blockbuster teeth on the found footage monster movie Cloverfield in 2008.

Well, that's excluding his nineties Gwyneth Paltrow/ David Schwimmer rom com The Pallbearer, which is a different sort of horror.

Since Cloverfield's massive success Reeves re-affirmed his skill in the genre with Let Me In, a 2011 remake of the vampire teen horror Let the Right One In which managed to retain both the blackly comic, poignant tone of the original and boasted a breakthrough performance from young star Chloe Grace Moretz.

However this one-two punch was soon followed by a retreat from the horror genre as Reeves focused on rebooting the Planet of the Apes franchise with a pair of well-liked sci-fi prequels in 2014 and 2017. This big budget success soon saw the major studio heads come calling, and now that Reeves is busy directing The Batman it seems unlikely he'll be returning the smaller scale action of the horror genre.

Well, usually smaller scale. Cloverfield's city smashing is a bit of an anomaly.

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Cathal Gunning hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.