There's lots to look forward to at the latest edition of the Overlook Film Festival, which opens with Carry Barker's sinister Obsession and closes with Hokum. A partnership with MUBI has allowed the festival to significantly expand the range and quality of its international films. With a second wave of films yet to be announced, watch this space.

The festival runs from 9 to 12 April.

View Films by Strand:

View previous years coverage of the Overlook Film Festival festival:

Box office and information

Overlook Latest Reviews

Obsession
Obsession
A desperate wish for love goes terribly wrong.
Saccharine
Saccharine
A lovelorn medical student is terrorised by a hungry ghost after taking part in an obscure weight loss craze: eating human ashes.
Marama
Marama
A young Māori woman travels to Victorian England after receiving a letter promising information about her birth parents. As she peels back the layers of colonial deceit, she is driven to avenge her shattered ancestry.
The Cramps: A Period Piece
The Cramps: A Period Piece
A vibrant collision of horror, comedy, and aching personal truth as seen through the eyes of a young woman dealing with the pain of her menstrual cramps.
Trauma Or, Monsters All
Trauma Or, Monsters All
An aspiring author gets more than she bargained for when she writes an article for the local paper about her small town’s dark history, prompting unwanted speculation on what monsters may lie within.
Boorman And The Devil
Boorman And The Devil
After directing Point Blank and Deliverance, John Boorman was offered to direct The Exorcist II. The film became a massive failure, nearly ending his career. Years later, cast and filmmakers discuss its ambition and artistic value.
Never After Dark
Never After Dark
A wandering medium, Airi spends her life guiding restless spirits out of the world of the living. Summoned to an isolated country house, she comes face to face with a grotesque apparition with powers that defy her experience - but the biggest danger she faces comes from the living.
Affection
Affection
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?
The Restoration At Grayson Manor
The Restoration At Grayson Manor
After losing both hands in an accident, Boyd Grayson becomes the prime candidate for an experimental replacement procedure in this queer, campy, erotic horror.
The Holy Boy
The Holy Boy
In Italy's happiest town, a haunted teacher discovers dark secret behind weekly gatherings where locals seek healing from a teenage boy's embrace. His quest to save the youth reveals the sinister nature of a community hiding behind joy.
A-Z of Overlook Film Festival 2026 reviews >>>

Overlook Film Festival Features

Sweetness and light
Natalie Erika James on literary inspirations, colour coding and Saccharine
From the withered tree
Taratoa Stappard on colonial hierarchies, Ariana Osborne and Marama
The dying house
Taratoa Stappard on colonial horrors and inventing the Maori Gothic with Marama
Sugaring the pill
Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty and Chelsea Stardust on Grind
Hustle horror
Barbara Crampton on comedy, horror, corporate culture and Grind
The dream of what could be
David Kittredge on Exorcist 2: The Heretic, Excalibur and Boorman And The Devil
Trial by fire
David Kittredge on Exorcist 2: The Heretic and making Boorman And The Devil
In their own hands
Glenn McQuaid and Alice Krige on The Restoration At Grayson Manor
Bloody marvellous
Brooke H Cellars on breaking taboos and The Cramps: A Period Piece
Teen in a trap
Paolo Strippoli on his coming-of-age horror The Holy Boy
Everything under the moon
Larry Fessenden on werewolves, the monsters within us and Blackout
News

59th New York Film Festival early bird highlights Futura, Jane By Charlotte, James Baldwin: From Another Place and The Velvet Underground

More news and features

Eye For Film continues to support festivals both locally and across the world. At the moment, we're covering:

Docs Ireland

Sheffield DocFest
The UK's premiere documentary film festival

Tribeca Festival

ImagineNative

Cannes Film Festival
The world's most famous film festival

In the Archive


Archive of festival coverage

News, features and reviews from 2005-2026

Coverage of the lynchpin German festival.