Grimmfest, Manchester’s International Festival of Fantastic Film is delighted to announce the full feature film line-up for 2025.
The festival will be returning to the Odeon Great Northern in Manchester, 9th – 12th October, to showcase the very best in new genre cinema. Four fear-filled days, twenty one brand new feature films and more World and International premieres than ever before. Lucky Grimmfest attendees will be some of the first people in the world to see many of our 2025 line up, which includes four World Premieres, seven International Premieres, two European Premieres, four UK Premieres, and four Northern UK Premieres. (Short film premieres will be announced soon).
This year’s selection of movie premieres will feature a whole host of incredible stars on the big screen, including; Dev Patel (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, MONKEY MAN), Jeremy Piven (ENTOURAGE, SMOKING ACES), Pixie Lott (POP STAR), Aneurin Barnard (DUNKIRK), Jon Heder (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE), Tim McInnerney (GLADIATOR 2), Rosy McEwen (BLACK MIRROR, THE ALIENIST), Richard Roxburgh (VAN HELSING), Shawnee Smith (THE SAW FRANCHISE), Torrey Hanson (CANDYMAN) and Thomas Lennon (NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM, RENO 911!) to name just a few.
Grimmfest directors Simeon Halligan and Rachel Richardson-Jones will be opening this year’s festival with the World Premiere of their new ‘Made in Manchester’ thriller PAST LIFE. Jeremy Piven stars alongside Pixie Lott, Aneurin Barnard and Tim McInnerny in a twisted tale of repressed memory, regression therapy, and a series of unsolved murders from the 80s.
Other World Premieres this year… Tom Botchii (ARTIK) makes a welcome return to the festival with the bone crunchingly brutal cat-and-mouse revenge thriller, SYPHON, in which a smug computer hacker learns the hard way that there is no such thing as a victimless crime. young witches, deadly rituals and bloody demonic revenge, in Manu Herrera‘s loving, visually ravishing homage to the horror cinema of the 80s and 90s, LILY’S RITUAL. And an avuncular antique dealer has a sinister tale to accompany every item in his shop, in Tim Connery’s THE DRIFTLESS, which reinvents the classic horror anthology as a celebration of the landscapes and mythologies of his native MidWest.
Having their International Premiere at Grimmfest this year… A black bounty hunter finds herself confronted by a vampire using an apartment complex as his private chicken coop in Remington Smith‘s gritty, neo-realist sociopolitical shocker, LANDLORD. A surprise birthday party starts to come… unravelled… in Jacob Lees Johnson‘s slippery psychedelic psychodrama, I SEE THE DEMON, starring Jon Heder and Alexis Zollicoffer. A disorientated man tries to reconstruct his damaged memory and recover lost time, in Dan Asma‘s astonishing, mind-blowing fusion of found footage, paranoid conspiracy theories and Lovecraftian cosmic horror, TRIBE. The fate of the universe depends on the incompetent efforts of a couple of drunken idiots in Gille Klabin‘s riotous black comedy, WEEKEND AT THE END OF THE WORLD. Parasitic mind controlling worms pair up with Patriarchal Religious Fundamentalism in WORMTOWN, Sergio Pinheiro‘s smart, savage and squirm-inducing allegory of… well, whatever the hell’s going on the USA right now. A grief-stricken widower and his young daughter find themselves trapped in the family’s 99 cent store as a terrifying infection rages outside, in Bari Kang‘s tense and emotionally harrowing reimagining of the classic zombie siege scenario, ITCH! And Kenichi Ugana (LOVE WILL TEAR US APART) is back with the utterly unhinged splatter satire, INCOMPLETE CHAIRS, in which a psychopathically perfectionist furniture designer takes his craft to truly…excessive lengths.
This year’s European Premieres… A tough rancher’s widow embarks on a mission of mercy and redemption, in Jordana Stott‘s elegiac post-apocalyptic Western, FORGIVE US ALL, starring Lily Sullivan, Callan Mulvey and Richard Roxburgh. And Dina Silva undergoes a cathartic confrontation with her demons in FRANKIE, MANIAC WOMAN, a characteristically unflinching evisceration of Entertainment Industry misogyny from Grimmfest favourite Pierre Tsigaridis (TWO WITCHES, TRAUMATIKA).
Having their UK Premieres this year at Grimmfest… A group of animal rights activists find themselves being hunted by murderous slaughterhouse workers in SQUEALERS, Abel Ferry‘s savage study of conflicting values taken to brutal and bloody extremes. A well-meaning middle class white couple quickly come to regret adopting a traumatised black child with some serious… “issues”, in Paul Etheredge‘s smart and slippery sociopolitical spin on the classic “demon child” trope, THE OTHER. A group of ANZAC soldiers find themselves adrift in an open boat in shark-infested waters in Kiah Roache-Turner‘s nail-biting survival thriller, BEAST OF WAR. And DON’T LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE proves to be sage advice in Emilio Portes‘ droll, pitch-black supernatural comedy, as a couple of bickering young brothers start to suspect that they are not really alone in the house at all…
And screening for the first time in the North of the UK… A musician couple fall foul of the Fae, and their hold on reality starts to crumble… Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen star in Bryn Chainey‘s icy, elegantly retro-styled folk horror, RABBIT TRAP. A lecherous Tinder user gets catfished into the worst Christmas of his life in Daniel M. Caneiro‘s outrageously twisted pitch-black comedy DEVIANT. A group of actors discover that their latest role is as sacrificial victims in an occult ritual, in DEAD BY DAWN, Dawid Torrone‘s dazzling and delirious homage to the classic giallo. An office worker starts to realise something is severely amiss at his new job in KOMBUCHA, Jake Myers‘ sly and splattery satire of corporate workplace culture and the commodification of creativity.
The full screening schedule, along with day passes will be released on Monday 18th Aug.
Full festival passes are available now at: https://www.grimmfest.com/festival/
