While many movie directors improve throughout their careers, some filmmakers peak with a killer debut. It is not easy for a director to follow a popular debut movie. Some filmmakers, like Quentin Tarantino, can follow their breakout hit with another, even more critically acclaimed follow-up. However, for many directors, their second movie is a humbling experience that proves not every project they touch will turn into gold. This isn’t a bad thing, but it can cause problems down the line.
For filmmakers like Richard Kelly, whose debut Donnie Darko was a major cult hit, a sophomore slump can prove to be a real issue. Kelly’s second movie Southland Tales was a great sci-fi that didn’t deserve to flop but ended up losing millions nonetheless. The director never recaptured the hype that surrounded his name at the time of Donnie Darko’s release. As a result, none of Kelly’s later movies were considered equal to his debut. Kelly is not the only filmmaker who has faced this issue, as there is a range of directors who peaked with their first movie.
10 Amy Heckerling
1982’s Fast Times At Ridgemont High remains one of the greatest high school dramedies. Even compared to director Amy Heckerling’s later effort Clueless, Fast Times At Ridgemont High perfectly combined timeless humor, an incredible young cast, and an ability to weave real issues into its narrative without ever feeling preachy. Unfortunately for Heckerling, although Clueless was a huge hit, she never replicated the success of Fast Times At Ridgemont High in later projects. As such, her later career mostly consists of solid but unspectacular Hollywood comedies.
9 Orson Welles
Orson Welles is a titan of cinema and a rare director whose contributions to the medium can’t be overstated. However, although there’s a lot of filmmaking innovation included throughout his career, Citizen Kane is comfortably his most important and engaging movie. Welles’ Citizen Kane is deservedly called one of the best movies ever made, which made the project pretty much impossible to follow. Although many of the director’s later movies are valuable efforts in their own right, none could hope to top Citizen Kane.
8 Rian Johnson
While Rian Johnson is equally beloved and hated online, one thing is for certain. His 2005 debut Brick remains the director’s strongest film from start to finish. A unique blend of high school drama and film noir, Brick is an ambitiously weird, immersive project that benefits from a career-best turn from Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In lesser hands, Brick would be insufferably precocious. However, Johnson’s movie finds real pathos and humanity in its over-the-top teen movie archetypes and their bizarre hard-boiled dialogue, surpassing even the likes of Knives Out.
7 Richard Kelly
As outlined above, Richard Kelly’s career stalled when 2006’s bloated Southland Tales debuted at Cannes. To this day, the critical standing of Donnie Darko far outstrips both the interesting but flawed Southland Tales and 2009’s more conventional mystery The Box. While Donnie Darko’s complicated ending might be an enigma, it doesn’t take a genius to work out why Kelly’s career never replicate his debut success. Donnie Darko was already almost too weird for mainstream success, so it was no surprise when his follow-ups were too offbeat and too bland respectively.
6 Eli Roth
2005’s infamous Hostel made a big cultural impact and the 2018 comedy horror adaptation The House with a Clock in its Walls is kid-friendly fantasy fun. However, 2002’s bizarre Cabin Fever is still the best distillation of director Eli Roth’s unique brand of gross-out horror and dark humor. Based on his own experience of suffering from debilitating psoriasis, Cabin Fever is a nightmarish story of college kids succumbing to a flesh-eating diastase on what should be an idyllic holiday. Its creepy imagery and surreal gags make Cabin Fever Roth’s best movie to date.
5 Marcus Nispel
Director Marcus Nispel came to prominence in the ‘00s when his successful Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake prompted a string of re-imaginings of classic horror movies from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Nispel’s own 2009 Friday the 13th remake is solid fun and his 2011 fantasy flop Conan the Barbarian isn’t as bad as critics claimed. However, 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains his strongest effort to date. An intense re-imagining that managed to live up to the original movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre wisely doesn’t try to match the original’s grimy atmosphere and instead offers a slicker, more polished update of its premise.
4 JA Bayona
A Monster Calls is a stellar, poignant fantasy drama from 2016. Meanwhile, the bizarre and uneven Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has its moments, even if the sequel is a big step down from its 2015 predecessor Jurassic World. However, 2007’s tragic ghost story The Orphanage is the first and best work from Spanish filmmaker JA Bayona. A moving gothic horror mystery, The Orphanage is alternately terrifying, beguiling, and crushingly sad. It is an intense watch but remains Bayona’s strongest directorial work so far.
3 Roger Kumble
Cruel Intentions made Roger Kumble look like a potential superstar. A teen movie spin on Dangerous Liaisons, Cruel Intentions mixed high camp with an A-list cast. The dialogue was knowingly silly and the entire thing teetered on the edge of absurdity, but star-making turns from Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Michelle Gellar ensured Cruel Intentions was a major hit. However, none of Kumble’s follow-ups came close to recapturing its appeal. 2002’s The Sweetest Thing was cringe-worthy while 2005’s Just Friends was inoffensive but unmemorable. By the late ‘00s, Kumble was demoted to directing corny family comedies.
2 Sofia Coppola
While 2003’s Lost in Translation might be more accessible, The Virgin Suicides is Sofia Coppola’s best project so far. A dreamy adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel of the same name, The Virgin Suicides takes a grim story and makes it enthralling. Dripping with angst and bolstered by an incredible central turn from Kirsten Dunst, The Virgin Suicides captures the tragedy of misspent youth better than any of Coppola’s later efforts. In comparison, The Beguiled and Marie Antoinette feel like cheap imitations.
1 F. Gary Gray
While F. Gary Gray did parlay his indie success into bigger projects, the filmmaker never outdid his debut. In 1995, Gary made Friday, a stoner comedy that followed slacker friends Smokey and Craig as they attempted to repay a debt to their dealer. A goofy knockabout farce, Friday has a charm that its sequels and countless imitators could never replicate. Nor, unfortunately, could Gray, despite making numerous major blockbusters. He might be better known for The Fate of the Furious and Men In Black: International, but Friday makes him one of the many movie directors whose debut remains their best work so far.
