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FrightFest has been a regular staple for UK horror fans since the ’90s. The horror and fantasy film festival returns this year between August 21-25.
For five days, London’s Odeon Luxe Leicester Square and Odeon Luxe West End will be screening films like Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger reboot, starring Peter Dinklage, satires on AI and influencer culture, along with a documentary on the ever-controversial A Serbian Film.
The festival opens with the UK premiere of The Home, a psychological horror from the twisted mind of The Purge franchise creator James DeMonaco. SNL mainstay Pete Davidson defies typecast as Max, a rebellious youth who finds himself working at a retirement home. Some sinister secrets and some spine-chilling geezers are to be expected.
For the closing film, the focus shifts to Gen Z with sure-t0-be-depraved social media riff Influencers. A sequel to the 2022 Shudder hit Influencer, the thriller finds Canadian actress Cassandra Naud reprising her role as CW, a shadowy Tom Ripley-like figure who targets influencers.
The Toxic Avenger, also on the line-up, is the much-awaited reboot of the 1984 Troma classic of the same name. Much like its campy source material, it’ll be heavy on the splatter, with Dinklage as the unsanitary superhero of the title.
Directed Macon Blair, star of cracking B-movie thrillers like Green Room and Blue Ruin, The Toxic Avenger premiered at 2023’s Fantastic Fest, but has faced numerous delays with distribution. At FrightFest, UK genre fans will finally get to witness the janitor-turned-avenger who battles gangsters and CEOs with a mop and toxic waste.
Other hype-worthy titles from the line-up include Gerard Johnson’s Odyssey (not to be confused with the upcoming Christopher Nolan epic), a neon-lit London nightmare full of coke and seedy alleyways, Flush, a French film with some abominable ‘plunging’ and ‘plumbing’ involved, and Borderline, a dark comedy with Ready or Not star Samara Weaving as a pop star and Smile 2’s Ray Nicholson playing her stalker fan.
If you’re the target demographic of all those unofficial Disney slashers like Blood and Honey, you can also book tickets for Bambi: The Reckoning, a blood-soaked retelling of the 1942 animated classic that will horrify everyone at Disney .
Other more timely picks include Cognaitive, nightmare fuel for another worried about AI stealing their job, and The Haunting at Jack the Ripper’s House, an eventful night of YouTube influencers being trapped at the serial killer’s pad.
In terms of retrospectives, FrightFest 2025 will feature a 4K restoration screening of Neil Marshall’s claustrophobic cave horror The Descent with some of the cast in attendance.
Filmgoers who look forward to Rocky Horror Picture Show singalongs every Halloween can also check out Sane Inside Sanity: The Rocky Horror Phenomenon, a documentary celebrating the film’s 50th anniversary from a two-pager written in crayon to flop film and future cult hit. Even the infamously eyebrow-raising A Serbian Film gets the documentary treatment with A Serbian Documentary.
With FrightFest marking its 26th year, festival co-director Alan Jones is promise a fest that ‘will be epic in every sense, celebrating the inventive, transgressive and diverse’.
Festival passes go on sale at 12pm on Saturday, July 12, with single tickets available to buy a week later on July 19.
Head to the official site for all the info.