Showing posts with label FrightFest 2025. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FrightFest 2025. Show all posts

Thursday, 7 August 2025

FrightFest 2025: Short Films Take Centre Stage with Four Terrifying Showcases

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/


Thursday, 10 July 2025

FrightFest 2025: A Five-Day Horror Spectacle Unleashes Its Full Line-Up

 

By Jon Donnis

FrightFest is back and bigger than ever. From 21 to 25 August, the UK’s premier horror and fantasy film festival returns to the ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, spilling over into two screens at the ODEON Luxe West End. With sixty-nine features from fourteen countries across four continents, this year’s event promises a wild, bloody ride through the strange and spectacular.

The festival kicks off with the UK premiere of The Home, a chilling thriller from The Purge creator James DeMonaco. Comedian Pete Davidson stars as Max, a rebellious young man sentenced to community service in a quiet retirement home that quickly proves to be anything but. FrightFest closes with Influencers, the follow-up to Shudder’s social-media shocker. Directed by Kurtis David Harder, it’s a twisted, unsettling take on digital fame and the dangers that lurk behind the perfect filter.

THE HOME

FrightFest regulars return in force. Erik Bloomquist unveils his latest cult nightmare Self-Help, while Simon Rumley brings Crushed, his most emotionally raw work to date. The Adams family are back with Mother of Flies, a spiritual follow-up to Hellbender. Joe Begos returns with Jimmy and Stiggs, a gore-soaked joyride packed with added footage from Eli Roth. Neil Marshall also reappears, hosting a special 4K restoration screening of his 2005 classic The Descent, with cast members in attendance.

Main screen highlights include the long-awaited reboot of The Toxic Avenger, the UK premiere of A Serbian Documentary, and genre-benders like The Rows, Bone Lake and What She Doesn’t Know, co-written by the daughter of horror legend William Castle. Also screening are British entries like Odyssey and Cognitive, and inventive indies such as Flush, Marshmallow, Night of Violence and Redux Redux, a reality-hopping horror from the McManus Brothers.

The Discovery Screen slate is as unpredictable and bold as ever. The 'First Blood' strand features world premieres from up-and-coming UK talent, including He Kills At Night, Healing Andy and The Haunting at Jack the Ripper’s House. US entries bring everything from killer clowns in Super Happy Fun Clown to rural terror in The Confession, while Canadian and Australasian films deliver werewolves, body horror, and a uniquely twisted musical journey.

Notable entries include Bambi: The Reckoning, a gory reinterpretation of the classic tale, and Blockhead, the debut narrative feature from Matt Harlock. The documentary section is packed too, with deep dives into genre icons like Graham Humphreys and Andy Milligan, and Sane Inside Insanity, a detailed look at the enduring cult of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

THE TOXIC AVENGER

International animation also makes a strong showing with the UK premiere of Latvian film Dog of God, which explores historic werewolf trials with fever-dream energy, and Gill from South Korea, continuing the powerful visual storytelling of director Jae-huun Ahn.

As co-director Alan Jones puts it, “FrightFest in its 26th year remains the UK’s Number One destination for genre fans.” With a huge range of world premieres, cult favourites, experimental visions and nostalgic callbacks, this year’s festival celebrates the strange, the stylish and the genuinely scary.

Full short film line-ups and guest appearances are still to come. But one thing is already clear. If you love horror in all its forms, there’s nowhere else to be this August.

BORDERLINE