The line-up for FrightFest 2025 has been announced and it’s packed with eagerly awaited shockers and fresh blood.

The peak of every horror fan’s calendar opens with the UK premiere of James DeMonaco’s The Home and closes with the UK premiere of Kurtis David Harder’s Influencers, the sequel to the 2023 Shudder fave Influencer. 

The line-up includes several returning directors, such as Erik Bloomquist with Self-Help, Simon Rumley with Crushed, the Adams family’s spiritual sequel to Hellbender, Mother of Flies, Joe Begos’ Jimmy and Stiggs (which comes from Eli Roth’s distribution company and will be the first screening with additional Roth footage!), and Neil Marshall returns with the world premiere of the 4K restoration of The Descent – with some of the original cast in attendance.

Also hitting the main screen are the UK premiere of The Toxic Avenger, the superb reimagining of the Troma classic, A Serbian Documentary, which focuses on the controversial movie, Toshiaki Toyoda’s Transcending Dimensions, Seth Daly’s The Rows, Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s Bone Lake, Terry Castle (daughter of the legendary William Castle) offers serial killer thriller What She Doesn’t Know, the McManus Brothers’ Redux Redux, Gerard Johnson’s Odyssey, and Bamboo Revenge.

Also screening are Cognaitive, Hold the Fort, Marshmallow, Night of Violence, and Flush. There are world premieres of Chris Marrs Piliero’s Appofeniacs, Jeffrey Primm’s 213 Bones, Vatanyu Ingkaviat’s Tomb Watcher, and Ritesh Gupta’s The Red Mask.

The Discovery strands feature some excellent titles from both emerging and established artists from around the world. There’s Borderline, starring Samara Weaving, Patrick Rea’s Super Happy Fun Clown, Keith Boynton’s The Haunted Forest, and Andrew Mudge’s The Arborist.

More world premieres include Gabriel Carrer’s Death Cycle, Matt Stuertz’s Human, Tim Cruz’s Don’t Let the Cat Out, Pig Hill, Blood Shine, the debut from Raven Carter, Noseeums, James Ross’ Parasomnia, Dani Barker’s Five.

More films from the US include Kombucha, DW Medoff’s Your Host, The Mannequin, In a Cold Vein, Cover, The Only Ones, Paul Bunnell’s A Blind Bargain, The Other People, and Will Canon’s The Confession.

UK entries include Bambi: The Reckoning, and Matt Harlock’s Blockhead.

The First Blood strand presents four world premieres: Tom Pickering’s He Kills at Night, Luke Tedder’s The Caretaker, Healing Andy, and Natasha Tosini and Stephen Staley’s The Haunting at Jack the Ripper’s House.

There’s a pair of films from Australia: Alice Maio Mackay’s The Serpent’s Skin, and Parish Malfitano’s Salt Along the Tongue, while from New Zealand there’s Callum Devlin’s The Weed Eaters.  

From Canada, there’s the world premiere of Jay Reid’s Sick Puppy and Ava Maria Safai’s Foreigner.

Other European entries are Above the Knee, from Viljar Bøe, who was at FrightFest a few years back with Good Boy, and Juan Alberacin’s El Instinto (Instinct).

FrightFest wouldn’t be the same without some documentaries, and this year there’s Captured Souls: In Conversation with Graham Humphreys from director Chris Collier, Alaric S. Rocha’s mockumentary Where is Juan Moctezuma? The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan, and Andreas Zerr’s Sane Inside Insanity: The Rocky Horror Phenomenon.

This year there are also two animated movies: Lauris Abele and Raitis Abele’s Dog of God from Latvia and the Korean film Gill from Jae-huun Ahn.

Co-director Alan Jones comments: “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”.

FrightFest takes place at The Odeon LUXE Leicester Square from Thursday, August 21st to Monday, August 25th. Full passes are on sale from noon on Saturday, July 12th. Day passes and single tickets on sale from noon on Saturday, July 19th. Head over to www.frightfest.co.uk for more information.