FrightFest 2025

So it’s been a funny old FrightFest this one. A very weak opening night selection of films, and while it picked up a bit over the course of the weekend, there’s been a noticeable lack of “big hitter” movies. Certainly nothing equivalent to last year’s UK premiere of THE SUBSTANCE, or even STRANGE DARLING. It’s particularly galling as it’s been such a knockout year for the horror genre otherwise, with films like WEAPONS, BRING HER BACK and TOGETHER all debuting in the last few weeks – so close to the festival, it makes you wonder what it’d have been like to have them there.

But c’est la vie. There’s still been some decent movies there this year. Though a couple of real stinkers too! Anyway, here’s some quick thoughts on all the ones I saw – which was most of the main screen films.

THURSDAY NIGHT (opening night)

THE HOME

Oh god. What a mess. Pete Davidson is not a great actor, but the problems with this movie lie mostly with the script. I can see why this movie has been sitting on the shelf for a while now. It starts off OK-ish, I guess, but then rapidly gets muddled, meandering, silly and unfocused in the second and third act. And then tries to get some attention back with a hyper-violent final 15 minutes that sadly just feels ludicrous rather than earned. Not a good movie in any way. It’s worse than John Carpenter’s THE WARD, which is saying something. 3/10

COGNAITIVE

Comedy techno-thriller, which started off sort-of-OK, with some amusingly written techbros characters, but then failed when it tried to transition into KILLBOTS / RUNAWAY territory. All a bit weak and predictable and badly needed more convincing gore/kills. I wasn’t completely bored, but I certainly wasn’t thrilled. 5/10

NIGHT OF VIOLENCE

Office invasion mayhem, but the problem was none of the villains or heroes were in any way sympathetic or just interesting. And the kills were pretty much just people being stabbed – so basic!! I gave up about 20 mins before it ended and went home. Speaking to my fellow fright festers the next day, I didn’t miss anything 4/10

FRIDAY

APPOFENIACS

A bad name for a movie, which is a shame – as it really is a great movie. A lovely surprise, which made me glad I made it in for the first film of the day. It’s a very Tarantino-esque multithreaded narrative about people having their lives ruined by deepfakes. The first two acts are lots of fun, but it’s the final act that really took the roof off, with a hilarious and insanely gorey fight sequence. 8/10

WHAT SHE DOESN’T KNOW

This 96 minute film somehow still feels like it’s at least 30 minutes too long. It’s stylishly shot, which is probably the nicest thing I can say about it, but god it’s thin as hell. Nothing particularly interesting happens. It’s like a slasher film with like no actual kills (until right at the very end – and they’re not worth it). Boring and mostly pointless. And then it makes an 11th-hour shift to supernatural horror territory at the end which somehow makes it even worse. 4/10

TRANSCENDING DIMENSIONS

Strange Japanese movie. Wacky, but in a mostly quite boring and detached way. I liked some of the visuals and soundtrack. But it’s tediously slow and I had to fight to stay awake in this one. Like a Wuxia movie with no actual martial arts. 4/10

THE TOXIC AVENGER (UNCUT)

Kind of exactly what I expected – a big-ish budget Troma movie. Certainly true to the source material and quite silly fun. Directed by Macon Blair, who previously starred in the superb thrillers BLUE RUIN and GREEN ROOM, as well as directing the oddball I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE. I think he had fun directing this one – it’s dumb but plenty of gooey fun and there’s a good cast of entertainingly grotesque characters played by cult favourites. Given it was unrated though, I thought it was a bit light on the extreme gore, violence and boobs though. More would have been appreciated! 7/10

FLUSH

The late night movie was a small indie french comedy thriller, set entirely in a nightclub toilet stall, and focused on a protagonist whose head has been wedged down the bog hole by thugs. More fun than it sounds (as in – to watch the movie – I’m not saying anyone would want that to happen to them IRL!) 7/10

SATURDAY

THE RED MASK

A solid Scream-esque slasher/home invasion movie with plenty of meta references. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but solid performances and well directed. I enjoyed it 7/10

MARSHMALLOW

A really nicely made film, with some great performances from a young cast. Starts off as a loving homage to camp-blood-type horror, but then evolves into something more interesting and Black Mirror-esque. 8/10

SELF-HELP

I really liked the director’s previous two films (SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS and FOUNDERS DAY – both at previous Frightfests) but this one just didn’t quite work for me. It felt too bloodless, like a horror movie missing the horror. And the script wasn’t witty or smart enough to make up for the lack of thrills and gore. Disappointing – as it was well made and the performances weren’t bad. 5/10

CRUSHED

A very grim but quietly compelling slice of social realism. It dragged on a bit longer than it probably needed to, but it just about stayed the right side of interesting. Not a movie I think I’ll be rushing to watch again though. The subject matter is really quite unpleasant, though it had some interesting things to say about keeping faith in a world where the darkest recesses of the internet exists. 6/10

JIMMY AND STIGGS

A slice of pure psychedelic gonzo filmmaking, this is like ERASERHEAD if David Lynch had been mainlining Hunter S Thompson’s supply when making it. It’s almost completely incoherent – like a rambling dream – but that doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate it. Genuinely crazy. A bit like if Ben Wheatley and a young Peter Jackson had made a movie together while taking all the drugs. Not my cup of tea, but max respect 6/10

HOLD THE FORT

A really fun horror-comedy, with a couple forced to join their HOA to fight a demonic incursion in their new neighborhood. I really liked this one – and it could have been a real classic. The only thing that took the lustre off it for me was the lack of development with the main two characters. They’re kind of useless, unlikeable dweebs, and while that’s kind of funny at the start, by the end of the film I wanted to see them become actual bad-asses that we could cheer on. It’s still a fun movie though! 8/10

SUNDAY

TOMB WATCHER

A Thai gothic melodrama. I kind of enjoyed this one, but it dragged on a bit in the last act. Felt like it should have been resolved a lot quicker as there was a natural point where it felt like it could have ended, but instead went off on another 30 minute ramble that got increasingly silly. 6/10

THE DESCENT

This is a lovely new 4K restoration of what remains Neil Marshall’s best movie (so far!) I don’t think I’d actually seen this again since I saw it in cinemas on release, so it was actually great to see it on the big screen again. It’s a slightly more flawed film than I remembered, but still hugely impactful and with an unrivalled sense of claustrophobia. 8/10

BONE LAKE

A great movie! I was hugely relieved. Yeah, this was so much fun. A superb psycho-sexual thriller that was by turns funny, dramatic, sexy, violent and quite sweetly tender. Really decent script, great cast and tight direction. A great crowd pleaser from start to finish. It’s like a much more fun version of SPEAK NO EVIL with the excessive grim-ness replaced with thrills 9/10

REDUX REDUX

Last film of Sunday night was a terrific sci-fi thriller, that felt like a cleverly-reversed version of THE TERMINATOR. Tightly shot action sequences balanced with some wonderfully emotive performances from the main female lead and her younger counterpart. It’s clever, propulsive storytelling that does just enough world-building to make it interesting without the losing the focus on our characters and their feelings. A damn fine movie 9/10

MONDAY (final day)

By day 5, I was starting to feel movied-out, and I didn’t make it in for the first film – ODYSSEY – which was apparently a really good grubby crime thriller. But never mind. The rest of the films that day were all pretty decent.

MOTHER OF FLIES

I saw the director(s) previous film – WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS – a few years ago at Frightfest and while I liked aspects of it, I found it a bit slow and rambling and I didn’t click with the characters. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I much liked their new film. Really lovely visuals and music, and a decent story with relatable characters. Felt oddly wholesome in a dark pagan way. 7/10

BAMBOO REVENGE

A decent enough French thriller. The setup was solid, but I don’t think the execution quite worked. The actual death/torture by Bamboo was a surprisingly small part of it in the end, it was more like a regular crime thriller. I wasn’t bored, and the performances were decent enough. One of the twists at the end was pretty interesting, but then it squandered it with another twist-too-far. Still, it was only 87 minutes long so didn’t drag on at least 6/10

THE ROWS

This one started off really strong, and for the first 20-30 minutes I was thinking that it could be “This year’s STRANGE DARLING” – but then it made a few missteps, especially in the final act. It’s still a decent film, and it looks absolutely gorgeous with pristine 35mm photography. But the surreal fantastical/supernatural elements felt too poorly integrated to make sense and ended up detracting, rather than enhancing the final thing. As I said to someone else just after seeing it – David Lynch can do that kind of thing really well, but even he knows you need to have some breadcrumbs to sell the idea. 7/10

INFLUENCERS

This is a sequel to a film I’ve not actually seen (INFLUENCER, from 2022) but luckily it’s pretty easy to get up to speed with the characters and I had a lot of fun with this one. Cassandra Naud plays a compellingly interesting sociopath and it’s fun to watch the tables turn (and back again!) as her nemesis closes in on her. A solid film to end the festival on. 8/10

And that’s it for Frightfest 2025. Now I need to take a rest from Horror movies for a while. Or at least, a few days. Haha – I still need to see TOGETHER and BRING HER BACK. Kind of crazy that films like that didn’t debut at Frightfest this year. Hopefully not a sign of things to come. I do bloody love this festival and I hope to carry on attending many more in the future. But for god’s sake – I hope they have a decent creature feature or two, next year. There weren’t really any good monster movies showing there this year!