Harsh shadows, minimalist self-composed scores, and the first commercial usage of the Panaglide camera system are a few of the things that come to mind when discussing John Carpenter. As one of the most stylized and prolific voices in 80s horror and science fiction, Carpenter has become a primordial influence on how my work approaches genre conventions. Halloween brought the terror to the home, The Thing brought the terror into the body, and They Live revealed that the terror is around us every second of every day. His signature high-contrast lighting and provocative, voyeuristic camera movements have been indispensable to my development as a filmmaker. Through his work, I hope to unearth the uglier side of humanity and attempt to find a way through it all.
As one of the most successful filmmakers of the 20th century, Steven Spielberg needs no introduction. I find myself at times hesitating to admit his influence on my work as it feels akin to admitting the influence of water on being wet. I aim for a level of grandeur and whimsy that Spielberg has been able to achieve in his best films, and I wish his raw creative spirit saw itself reflected more often in our modern blockbuster cinema.
To me, Steven Spielberg is the rebuttal to the idea that great films cannot also please large audiences and bring in sales. His camera remains one of the best characters in every film he directs, and as Hitchcock once said, "Young Spielberg is the first one of us that doesn't see the proscenium arch." While a talent unto himself, his movies benefit from brilliant sound design, razor-sharp editing, and the usual moving score by John Williams. He embodies the type of creative collaborator I strive to be in my films and helps me understand how these works can't belong only to a singular artist.
In recent years, James Gunn has proven himself to be one of my favorite directors working in modern Hollywood. Amidst studio meddling, algorithmic marketing, social media crusades, etc., he has a formidable directorial voice that shines through every project he works on, no matter the size. His most recent work, Superman, is likely my favorite film of 2025 and a movie that I feel like I've been waiting to see for decades as a life-long fan of the character.
Gunn's greatest strength comes from his ability to be so irreverent, crude, silly, to show us a cast of characters that couldn't possibly work well together and make us cheer for them before the credits roll. He's the kind of director who takes something as patentably ridiculous as a talking CGI raccoon and recognizes him as the loneliest, saddest creature in the universe. He's the kind of director who decides that if the new status quo is about pointing fingers, condescending, and bullying, then maybe kindness is the new punk rock.
