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- 2022 was a great year for directorial debuts, with some notable films including Domee Shi's Turning Red, Parker Finn's Smile and Charlotte Wells' Aftersun, just to name a few. Only time will tell if they'll manage to exceed the prestige and critical acclaim of their first movies, which some filmmakers never manage to do.
Some directors take time to develop their style and grow into great filmmakers. For these individuals, their debut feature film may be something of a trial run, made while they're young and still in the process of working out exactly what their strengths and weaknesses as an artist are.
These aren't those directors. Each of them released a great film as their film debut, and even if the movies that followed were good, they never quite lived up to the magic of that first film. It should be noted that those directors who are still active in the film world are always capable of releasing a film in the future that tops their debut (and there's an element of subjectivity to the whole idea in the first place), but for now, these are filmmakers who arguably peaked with their very first feature film.
Updated on December 29th, 2022, by Hannah Saab:
2022 was a great year for directorial debuts, with some notable films including Domee Shi's Turning Red, Parker Finn's Smile and Charlotte Wells' Aftersun, just to name a few. Only time will tell if they'll manage to exceed the prestige and critical acclaim of their first movies, which some filmmakers never manage to do.
Richard Kelly – 'Donnie Darko' (2001)
Available to stream on HBO Max, AMC+ and Kanopy.
Donnie Darko was an unexpectedly popular hit, developing something of a cult following almost immediately and being one of the most famous "smallish" movies of the early 2000s. It capitalized on a somewhat nostalgic 1980s setting long before doing so became trendy and tells a strange and hard-to-describe story about a teenage boy who's driven into despair and even madness when he gets a vision that tells him the world's end is imminent.
Richard Kelly has made a couple of films since Donnie Darko, but none managed to attract as wide a fanbase. Granted, his 2006 film, Southland Tales, has been picking up a cult following in recent years after getting mostly negative reviews on release, but Donnie Darko is a distinctive and fresh debut that would be difficult for many filmmakers to follow up.
Marc Webb – '(500) Days of Summer' (2009)
Available to stream on HBO Max.
Marc Webb directed countless music videos and a few short, direct-to-video (as they were still called in the 2000s) music documentaries, with (500) Days of Summer being his first feature film. It feels a bit like millennial Woody Allen—for better or worse—and upfront declares to its audience that it's going to be a more cynical and down-to-earth romantic comedy than most films of its genre.
Still, even if it has a few rough edges, (500) Days of Summer remains Webb's best (and most critically well-received) movie. It's a unique example of a romantic comedy, so it stands out compared to his later films, like the two Amazing Spider-Man movies. While the first of those films have some defenders, it's still a bit redundant due to telling a very familiar Spider-Man story. The second falls victim to many problems that frequently plague less-than-successful superhero movies.
Kevin Smith – 'Clerks' (1994)
Available to stream on Showtime.
Kevin Smith had a good run throughout the 1990s, and even post-2000, he's had a handful of films that have been well-liked by his fans (and even some critics). But nothing he's made hit as hard or felt as fresh and exciting as Clerks, which depicts a day in the life of two guys in their early 20s, surviving the jobs they hate and dealing with some particularly hectic shifts at the places they work.
There are Kevin Smith films that can at least hold a candle to Clerks. Chasing Amy worked as a more mature, slightly more dramatic Kevin Smith film, Dogma was very ambitious, and both Clerks 2 and Clerks 3 were surprisingly good sequels. But there's something particularly great about Clerks - and the way it captured something so tangible at the perfect moment in time - that makes it more of a classic than any other film Smith has made.
Orson Welles – 'Citizen Kane' (1941)
Available to stream on HBO Max.
Citizen Kane is one of the greatest and most unique films of all time and was the debut film from writer, director, and actor Orson Welles; it is, therefore, one of the best debuts of all time by default. And given how critically acclaimed it's been within the world of film, it also stands to reason that no other film made by Welles ever quite lived up to it.
Granted, Orson Welles's later films still had a great deal to offer. But Citizen Kane, with its rise and fall story of a flawed, enigmatic man and its groundbreaking cinematic techniques, is undoubtedly the best film he ever made, and at just 25 years of age, too.
Tobe Hooper – 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (1974)
Available to stream on AMC+, Tubi TV and Paramount+ Showtime.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a landmark horror film. Made on a shoestring budget and featuring an incredibly gritty sense of realism, it tells a classic horror film-type story about a group of young people who are tormented and killed by a sadistic family of killers out in rural Texas. Unsurprisingly, one member of this twisted family has a chainsaw.
Director Tobe Hooper did a fantastic job, considering this was his feature film debut. He certainly made some horror films in the years following that are notable and well-regarded in their own way—including Poltergeist in 1982—but as far as legacy and influence go, none proved to be quite as iconic as that original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Neill Blomkamp – 'District 9' (2009)
Available to stream on HBO Max.
Neill Blomkamp struck science-fiction gold with his first feature film, District 9. Part mockumentary, part satire, part action movie and part tragedy, it's a grounded and engrossing movie about how the human race fails to deal with a spaceship that comes to a halt over the city of Johannesburg and the refugee alien creatures that are forced to live on Earth as a result.
It was a trailblazing and wholly unique science-fiction film, and it's one that few science-fiction films have managed to surpass or equal since 2009... including Blomkamp's own sci-fi follow-ups. Elysium had its moments, and Chappie may have been a little over-hated, but neither came close to achieving the classic status that District 9 arguably has.
Zack Snyder – 'Dawn of the Dead' (2004)
Available to stream on Hulu.
When it comes to debut films being the best in a director's body of work, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is a slightly sneaky pick. Snyder has made far bigger and more ambitious films since, and many of them admittedly have more die-hard supporters than his 2004 remake of George Romero's classic zombie film has.
But many of those films are also divisive. Something like Watchmen is beloved by some and disliked by others, while there's little consensus on whether his DC superhero films are classic examples of the genre or too dreary and self-important for their own good. But Dawn of the Dead is generally well-liked, and so for being Snyder's least criticized and most frequently appreciated film, it arguably remains Snyder's best.
John Singleton – 'Boyz n the Hood' (1991)
Available to stream on Starz.
Boyz n the Hood was an amazingly successful debut for the late John Singleton. He directed the film at only 23 years of age and remains the youngest person to receive a nomination for Best Director at the Academy Awards.
A hood film set in Los Angeles, and tells a sympathetic and emotionally compelling film about three friends who have lived there all their lives, and the ways they get by and survive their often dangerous surroundings due to the level of gang warfare in the area. It still feels authentic and energetic some 30 years later, and while Singleton found success with later films like Shaft (2000) and the second Fast and Furious movie, nothing ever quite came as close to being as good as Boyz n the Hood.
Frank Darabont – 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994)
Available to stream on HBO Max.
Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption is a renowned drama film that needs no introduction (today). It follows the journey of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who, despite his assertion that he's innocent, is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the deaths of his wife and her boyfriend. Over the next two decades, Andy meets another prisoner, the witty smuggler Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), and becomes involved in a money-laundering scheme run by prison warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton).
It's a well-known fact that the box office flop eventually became a cult classic, and has consistently been on the no. 1 spot on IMDb's Top 250. While Darabont would go on to direct other notable works like The Green Mile (1999) and The Mist (2007), none would gain the same fame and acclaim of the full-length feature film he ever directed (not counting his 1983 short film, The Woman in the Room).
Ruben Fleischer – 'Zombieland' (2009)
Available to rent on Apple iTunes, Amazon Video and Google Play Movies.
Director Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland became a cultural phenomenon when it first premiered in 2009. The film follows the awkward college student Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) as he navigates a post-apocalyptic zombie apocalypse and ends up working with three strangers who join him on a long road trip across the Southwestern United States in search of a safe place.
Fleischer would go on to direct other blockbusters like Venom (2018) and Uncharted (2022), and even created a sequel to his classic film, Zombieland: Double Tap (2019). None of his works so far have come close to his beloved 2009 flick, which is a fan favorite among the numerous zombie comedies available today.