6 Movie Directors Who Went From Comedy to Horror

It’s not just a recent thing, though it has seemed to happen to a particularly noticeable extent in the last decade or so, that names associated with writing/directing comedic entertainment have switched to horror, and been largely successful at it. Jordan Peele doing so in 2017 was probably the most dramatic and surprising example, but then quite a few other directors have done so since, and it seems to be happening to a particularly great extent with younger filmmakers, and those who were previously best known for making comedic online content. Just to show that it’s not a fad, and there really is something to be said about the fine line between being funny and making something scary, here’s a collection of filmmakers active today who were once best known for comedy, but then turned toward horror, and made noteworthy films within that genre.

6 Danny and Michael Philippou

Sure, this spot in the ranking is for two directors, but they're being treated as the same entity the way you used to be able to do for the Coen Brothers and the Safdie Brothers (both of those pairs having “split up,” it seems, in more recent years). This spot is for the Philippou Brothers, Danny and Michael, who were previously known as RackaRacka. Well, sometimes people still refer to them as that, even when talking about the horror-focused feature films they’ve made, since RackaRacka is the name of the YouTube channel they formed and had their creative start in.

RackaRacka’s videos could sometimes get violent and a little creepy, but for the most part, humor was the focus. Still, the emphasis on violent and sometimes dark comedy made it a little less surprising when they started making actual horror movies, albeit it was still a noticeable enough jump tonally. Talk to Me, their feature debut, was pretty bleak, for the most part, and then Bring Her Back doubled down on that bleakness further, being among the heavier horror films released in recent memory. Also, both Talk to Me and Bring Her Back were incredibly well-made and engaging, enough so that there’s good reason to be optimistic about them making more high-quality horror films in the future (so long as they don’t have a Coen or Safdie-like split).

5 David Gordon Green

David Gordon Green might not be a household name, but his directorial trajectory has definitely been interesting. He admittedly didn’t specialize in comedy with his earliest films, but he’s still being included here because his most popular – and arguably his best – work as a director was within the comedy genre. A handful of indie dramas gave way to 2008’s Pineapple Express, which really is such a wonderful and weird time capsule of the late 2000s, and the sort of broad comedy people are starting to feel nostalgic for, especially since pure comedies seem to be a dying breed, at least when it comes to theatrical releases.

There were a couple more comedies Green directed post-Pineapple Express, all before he transitioned – it seems fully – to horror. He helmed three Halloween movies, with the 2018 one being solid, and the two follow-ups being… uh… interesting? And flawed. Very flawed. Then The Exorcist: Believer followed on from them, and was a further step down in quality, and to date, it’s David Gordon Green’s most recent film. The Exorcist: Believer has been justifiably forgotten, even though it’s still a fairly recent release, and sort of makes an argument that Green should pivot again, in some direction away from horror. Still, four horror movies in a row, even if they were of varying quality, is notable for someone who had several dramatic films in a row, followed by a handful of comedies in a row (there’s also Joe, starring Nicolas Cage, somewhere in the middle of that, which was a shift back toward drama between the comedies and the eventual horror movies).

4 Kevin Smith

With Kevin Smith, he’s someone who’s generally known for comedies, but he had a bit of a horror phase for a while there, in the 2010s. Before 2011, the oddest films he’d been involved in mashed up comedy with some sort of other genre. There was Dogma, which was also a fantasy movie, Jersey Girl, which was a bit of a melodrama on top of being a (more gentle than usual) comedy, and then Cop Out, which was a comedic action movie, and failed as both an action film and a comedy. Then, in 2011, there was Red State.

To date, Red State is the only full-on non-comedic feature film that Smith’s directed, being a thriller with some heavy horror – and occasional action – elements. Then there was Tusk, which was a horror-comedy that probably leaned more toward horror (and the comedic stretches of that film are weaker than the horror-focused parts), and then the pretty awful Yoga Hosers, which was another horror-comedy, but one that leaned far more toward comedy (doesn’t mean it’s funny, though… there’s a difference). Since 2017’s Yoga Hosers, Kevin Smith has more or less made a pivot back to the sorts of comedies he directed in his youth. So, he’s not exactly stuck to horror, or permanently pivoted away from comedy, but there was enough of a shift there for at least a few years to ensure he was worth acknowledging for present purposes.

3 Curry Barker

Like RackaRacka, Curry Barker was previously best-known for his work on YouTube, much of it comedic, before he had breakout success on a whole other level with his debut feature film: Obsession (which premiered in 2025, but didn’t get a wide release until 2026). Barker’s YouTube channel was called that's a bad idea, and he starred in various videos alongside Cooper Tomlinson, who had a supporting role in Obsession. Also, there’s a comparison to be made to RackaRacka because one of the videos on that's a bad idea was literally called Talk to Me (Parody), and was what you'd expect, based on that title.

You do still get the sense of Curry Barker’s knack for comedy in some parts of Obsession, because there are certain sequences (or maybe more isolated moments) that feel funny in a very dark way, but if anything, those comedic parts just serve to make the disturbing scenes in Obsession feel all the more stomach-churning. It is a grim, admirably heavy, and psychologically distressing horror film, and sure, it might feel premature to count Barker as a horror director after just one theatrically released feature film, but he was also behind the feature-length Milk & Serial (2024), which was released straight to YouTube, and is lined up to write and direct a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre film, which it’s more than reasonable to assume (for obvious reasons) will be horror-related.

2 Zach Cregger

Before Barbarian, Zach Cregger was most closely associated with – and known for – the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U' Know. This was a cult TV show that led to what was kind of a film, The Civil War On Drugs, in 2011, and then in 2009, there was also Miss March, which wasn’t great, but certainly was trying to be funny. Trevor Moore, another member of The Whitest Kids U’ Know, co-directed these two projects, but tragically passed away in 2021, after an accidental fall.

Cregger’s move toward horror came after this, and he has found success with these comparatively more serious projects, even if Barbarian did have some comedic moments, and the same can be said for 2025’s Weapons. Zach Cregger seems, for now at least, keen to stick with making horror-related projects, as shown by his upcoming 2026 film, a reboot of the Resident Evil film series, and then a 2028 film called The Flood… not much is known about that one, at this point, but it seems like it’ll be some kind of sci-fi/thriller/horror film, just based on the small amount of information that is known about its basic premise.

1 Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele was mentioned way back there in the intro, just because his career trajectory has represented the most dramatic pivot, and so far, he’s probably done the most within the horror sphere of this relatively new wave of funny people deciding to be scary people. Peele, before Get Out (2017), was most well-known for being one half of the comedy duo Key & Peele, with Keegan-Michael Key. Key & Peele was the name of their sketch show, which Peele co-created and co-wrote for, alongside being an executive producer and star, and then with Key, Peele also co-wrote, co-produced, and acted in the 2016 comedy film Keanu.

There was some degree of success with all these projects, plus some others, but nothing to the same extent as Get Out, which felt iconic as a horror movie, and also stood out for being so original and bold. There was satire in Get Out, and maybe some occasional dark comedy, but it was predominantly a psychological horror/thriller film, and the same could be said for Peele’s next directorial effort, the slightly messier – but still very compelling – Us. And then Peele went bigger with 2022’s Nope, which felt like a strange neo-Western, a monster movie, and a horror/thriller film, all at once. There is currently some doubt about what Peele’s next project will be, and when it might come out, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he continued to pursue horror, to some extent, based on the strengths of his three horror films directed to date.