# What is the best directorial debut of the 2010s?

> The 2010s produced some of modern horror and indie cinema's most striking debut features — from social-horror revelations to intimate character studies. Which first film was the decade's best?

*By YPB Team · Published June 5, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-directorial-debut-of-the-2010s*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Babadook** — score 1000/1000
   Jennifer Kent's 2014 debut weaponizes a children's pop-up book monster as a metaphor for grief and depression — a psychologically sophisticated horror film that redefined the genre.
2. **Raw** — score 1000/1000
   Julia Ducournau's 2016 debut about a vegetarian veterinary student awakening to cannibalistic urges is a visceral, feminist coming-of-age horror that caused fainting at Toronto and earned unanimous critical acclaim.
3. **Get Out** — score 1000/1000
   Jordan Peele's 2017 debut fused social satire with Hitchcockian thriller mechanics to create a precision-engineered horror film about race in America — one of the decade's most discussed movies.
4. **Hereditary** — score 897/1000
   Ari Aster's 2018 debut is a family trauma drama that metastasizes into occult horror — widely praised as the most terrifying debut since Rosemary's Baby and a startling display of formal control.
5. **The Witch** — score 692/1000
   Robert Eggers' 2015 debut — a Puritan New England folk horror set in 1630 — is as much a study in paranoia and religious patriarchy as it is a supernatural film.
6. **Whiplash** — score 538/1000
   Damien Chazelle's 2014 Sundance breakthrough — a jazz-drumming student under a sadistic conservatory instructor — is one of cinema's most viscerally stressful depictions of artistic obsession.
7. **Ex Machina** — score 323/1000
   Alex Garland's 2014 debut is a tautly choreographed three-hander about artificial intelligence, manipulation, and what it means to be sentient — cerebral sci-fi at its finest.
8. **Beasts of the Southern Wild** — score 323/1000
   Benh Zeitlin's 2012 debut shot in the Louisiana bayou with non-professional actors created a genuinely mythic child's-eye vision of displacement and wonder that won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize.
9. **Krisha** — score 1/1000
   Trey Edward Shults' 2015 debut, shot for under $30,000 with his own family as cast, tracks a recovering addict's disastrous Thanksgiving return — an intense, formally inventive micro-budget triumph.
10. **Short Term 12** — score 1/1000
   Destin Daniel Cretton's 2013 debut is an intimate, emotionally honest portrait of staff and residents at a foster-care facility — grounded in lived experience and anchored by Brie Larson's breakthrough performance.
11. **Safety Not Guaranteed** — score 1/1000
   Colin Trevorrow's 2012 debut is a charming indie about magazine interns investigating a man who claims to be building a time machine — genuinely whimsical without being precious.
12. **Booksmart** — score 1/1000
   Olivia Wilde's 2019 debut is a sharply funny, genuinely warm high-school comedy that updates the genre for the modern era through two overachieving best friends' last-night-of-senior-year odyssey.

Tags: movies, directors, 2010s, directorial debut