FrightFest’s short film programming has always been one of the festival’s sharpest claws, and for 2025, it’s going for the jugular. With a record-breaking number of entries, this year’s edition brings together four showcases brimming with bite, tension, satire and, frankly, a whole lot of blood.
Across four days, thirty-six films from nine countries will screen at the Odeon LUXE West End, including twenty-nine world premieres. Each showcase offers a different shade of horror, from bleak comedy and psychological torment to supernatural dread and creature carnage. As ever, there’s a strong showing from UK talent, alongside bold new work from the US, Australia, Europe, and beyond.
Friday kicks off the bloodbath with Showcase 1, where bad days spiral into existential nightmares and tech seduction threatens family life. There’s the French gem Dead Tooth, where a simple dentist appointment unravels into chaos, and the unnervingly cute-but-not Obey!, about a dead influencer dog that won’t stay silent. You’ve also got Tapestry, where grief turns occult, and Pandora, Inc., where loneliness opens the door to A.I. manipulation. It all builds to a crescendo of dread with the Nordic folktale Vӓsen, and a standout performance in Murderbird, a relationship drama that takes a turn into the feathered abyss.
Saturday’s Showcase 2 keeps things grounded in dread, with almost the entire lineup hailing from the UK. Highlights include Needleteeth, set on an Irish farm with a slow-burning menace, and No One Is Coming to Rescue You, where polite family introductions mask something far darker. You’ll also meet Gilda, who’s trying to entertain kids but ends up summoning the occult, and Inebriated, which injects some twisted emotion into possession tropes. The programme ends on a gorgeously uncomfortable note with You Look So Beautiful, a hazy romance that might be more cursed than cute.
Showcase 3 on Sunday leans into surrealism and sharp genre jolts, from the Mumbai-set Leopard (Waagh), where urban sprawl and natural instinct clash, to the freakishly fun Pimple, which might be the goriest puberty metaphor yet. In DIY, a simple attempt to hang a picture spirals into horror far beyond the hardware store, while Cruz (The Kook Cook) wins points for being one of the most bizarre (and darkly funny) entries, think desert-dwelling surfer with hipster-hunting tendencies. And if you're in the mood for romantic horror, It Loves Me So and Praying Mantis offer very different takes on love gone very, very wrong.
Monday closes the curtain with Showcase 4, bringing a more introspective, sometimes quietly devastating flavour to the mix. In Watch Me Burn, a deaf girl’s loneliness leads her down a dangerous path, while Frame finds horror in the silence of digital spaces. There’s some wicked levity too, with Ouija Go Out With Me?, a dating-gone-dead comedy that has fun with séance clichés. But it’s Undertone, with its creeping sound design, and Don’t Look, which builds a whole mythology around the act of seeing, that really unsettle. And if you’re looking for a strange fable to end things, Grandma Is Thirsty is here to rewrite your childhood bedtime stories.
FrightFest continues to be a reliable launchpad for fresh horror voices, and this year’s shorts underline the importance of letting weird, personal, and darkly funny visions through. There’s folklore. There’s body horror. There’s AI. There are birds with issues. It’s the kind of programme that doesn’t just scare, it surprises, amuses, provokes. Sometimes all in the same scene.
FrightFest 2025 runs from 21–25 August at Odeon LUXE Leicester Square and Odeon LUXE West End. The short film showcases screen across the 22nd to the 25th. Bring popcorn. Maybe don’t look directly at the screen.
For full programme details & tickets: http://www.frightfest.co.uk/
