7. Gareth Edwards
One of the best things about Gareth Edwards' debut, Monsters, is that it appeared from nowhere to end up being a critical darling and one of the most ambitious movies of 2010. Since the success of Monsters, male lead Scoot McNairy has gone on to appear in movies such as the Oscar winning Argo, Killing Them Softly and Promised Land and have a breakout 2012, much like his director did in 2010. The revolutionary sci-fi hit, shot with handheld digital cameras, rather than on the more expensive film, showed it is possible to make a big science-fiction movie without a $100 million budget from Fox with Sam Worthington in the lead. Much of the dialogue in the movie was improvised and Edwards had to edit over 100 hours of footage into a coherent movie, which in itself is an achievement. Monsters was very much the work of its director as he wrote, shot, helped edit and did all the visual effects for the piece. Edwards has since been attached to direct the Godzilla reboot, which is due to start shooting very soon for a release date next year. Its pre-production has been tumultuous with various writers working on the script, the most recent of which was Frank Darabont. The world didn't really need another Godzilla movie, but after Monsters it would be very interesting to see Edwards' take on the monster.