Eye For Film >> Festivals >> A-Z >> FrightFest >> 2025
This year's Frightfest has a different flavour, with less of the familiar and a good assortment of truly inventive, challenging films. One thing that's the same as ever is that there's an impressive selection of premières, with wide-ranging themes. You'll also find some of the most impressive genre work to have made its mark elsewhere on the festival circuit this year.
Frightfest has always been international in its focus and that's very much apparent here, with opportunities to see the best of what's emerging from developing horror industries around the world, as well as some treats from well-established industries such as those in Indonesia and South Korea. There's also a handful of films which the festival's luminaries have assisted through development. You'll also find a smattering of obscurities, and a chance to revisit Neil Marshall's The Descent on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.
The festival runs from 21 to 25 August.
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View previous years coverage of the FrightFest festival:
Frightfest Latest Reviews
A filmmaker spirals into an out of control bender, during which he comes to believe that he has been abducted by aliens. Fearing they’ll come back, he contacts an old friend to help him gear up for war.
Home from college, Lucy reunites with family including pet chimp Ben. Ben contracts rabies during a pool party and turns aggressive. Lucy and her friends barricade themselves in the pool, devising ways to survive the vicious chimp.
An unhappy woman who is tired of being pushed around decides to combine her love of clowning, serial killers and classic movie monsters into a night of bloody horror the world will never forget.
When an outspoken queer screenwriter is chosen to pen the final instalment of the legendary slasher franchise The Red Mask, she and her girlfriend are harassed by die-hard fans. They escape to a secluded Airbnb, where she concocts a dangerous game to play to unlock her writer’s block. Then two uninvited guests crash the scene.
Ellie is stuck in a cyclical nightmare grappling with a medical condition that erratically resets her memory. Left unable to remember her loving husband or young daughter, each reset leaves her disoriented and haunted with vivid memories and scattered recollections of an unfamiliar life she’s never lived. What is the cause of her rare illness, and can her husband really help cope with her affliction?
A troubled film editor and his distant daughter release an ancient monster while working to restore an incomplete silent horror movie from the forgotten Filipino horror past.
While passing through a vacation resort, a newlywed couple encounters a mysterious, strikingly beautiful countess and her aide.
A struggling actor is hoping her star will rise again with the romcom Renovated Romance, but while on location shooting her hopeful comeback, she finds a cabin in the woods and becomes possessed by a demonic force, causing havoc amongst the crew.
A young woman leaves her transphobic small-town, and develops a romance with tattoo artist Gen with whom she shares a paranormal connection. But their deep-rooted insecurities unknowingly release a demon, which possesses one of their ex-lovers and begins feeding on their friends by sucking out their lifeforce.
Members of an underground online community attend a secret weekend retreat to confront their fears and regain their sense of self. Two girls discover that one of their mothers has become romantically entangled with its leader, whose unusual self-actualisation methods may be deadly.
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