In that regard, Get Out is a film from 2017 with few equals.
The exact criteria for the Best Director category arguably feels a bit murky compared to other fields.
It features some understated-yet-beautiful camerawork (that opening one-take sequence is a particular standout), and its deeply-personal sense of racial satire is something that the horror genre has legitimately never seen before.
Ultimately, the evaluation of the award boils down to how the director oversees the film, executes a tone and vision for the story in the script, and tells a coherent and cohesive story with a distinctive artistic touch.