EXCLUSIVE: UK genre festival FrightFest has revealed its 2025 lineup with the event opening with Pete Davidson horror The Home.
The event, which runs between August 21 – Monday 25 August at The Odeon LUXE Leicester Square for its annual five-day extravaganza, will showcase sixty-nine features, including nineteen world premieres.
From director James DeMonaco, creator of The Purge franchise, actor-comedian Davidson plays Max in The Home, a rebellious twenty-something sentenced to community service at a quiet retirement home. Roadside/Lionsgate is releasing in the U.S. later this month.
The festival will close with Kurtis David Harder’s Influencers, which is being distributed by Shudder in the U.S. Set in southern France, it sees a young woman’s fascination with murder and identity theft send her life into a whirlwind of chaos.
Among the lineup, returning filmmakers include Erik Bloomquist who will be on hand with his latest chiller, Self-Help; Simon Rumley returns with Crushed; the Adams family are back with Mother Of Flies, their spiritual sequel to Hellbender; and Joe Begos is in the building with Jimmy And Stiggs — FrightFest will be the first festival to show the new version with additional Eli Roth footage. Then there is Neil Marshall, who will be presenting the world premiere 4K restoration screening of The Descent, with some of the original cast also in attendance.
The festival will have the UK premiere of The Toxic Avenger, the reboot of the 1984 Troma cult film, the eye-opening A Serbian Documentary, Toshiaki Toyoda’s Transcending Dimensions, Seth Daly’s home invasion feature film debut, The Rows, Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s sex and lies thriller Bone Lake, What She Doesn’t Know, a serial killer thriller co-written by Terry Castle, daughter of the showman William Castle, and the McManus Brothers will be at the festival with Redux Redux, a genre-bending sci-fi horror about a grieving mother searching for a reality where her murdered daughter is still alive.
Among the main screen movies will be British entry Odyssey by Gerard Johnson, while Chris Marrs Piliero’s Appofeniacs will have a world premiere. The Discovery strands will feature twenty-three U.S. entries, including Borderline with Samara Weaving, star of the former FrightFest sensation Ready Or Not, Patrick Rea’s serial killer clown spree Super Happy Fun Clown and The Arborist.
From the UK will be Bambi: The Reckoning, while there are also films from Spain, Korea, Norway and from Latvia is the UK premiere of Dog Of God, a historical depiction of the most famous werewolf trial in Northern Europe.
Co-director Alan Jones commented: “FrightFest in its 26th year remains the UK’s number one destination for genre fans. The 2025 event will be epic in every sense, celebrating the inventive, transgressive and diverse. So, join us for an event that has consistently remained in the top ten of the world’s best fantasy festivals list”.
The full lineup can be found later today on the festival’s website.
