Grimmfest, Manchester’s International Festival of Fantastic Film, celebrated its 17th anniversary this year with four ferocious, fear-filled days of the very best in genre cinema, screening at The Odeon Great Northern in Manchester, UK, from October 9th – 12th. Twenty-two features and three programmes of shorts, all new to Manchester, and many of them World, International or UK premieres. And all of them eligible for the much-coveted Grimm Reaper Awards.
The not inconsiderable challenge of allocating this year’s awards was accepted with admirable sang-froid by this year’s stoic jury: Director/Producer Nicholas Santos (IT CUTS DEEP, BLEEDING), Director Andrew Bell (Writer-Director of BLEEDING, winner of last year’s “Best Screenplay” Award), academic and author Shellie McMurdo, genre cinema journalist James Whittington and Stef Meyer, director of MANTRA, winner of Grimmfest “Best Short” in 2023.
The festival team would like to thank them all for their dedication, discernment, and diplomacy. The Jury’s task is never an easy one, but they accomplished it with a minimum of bloodshed and in the end a final consensus and agreement were reached.
The Grimm Reaper winners for Grimmfest 2025 are:
BEST SHORT FILM: JEFF (USA) and TIME EATER (Canada) Joint winners.
The Best Short category presented the Jury with a problem this year, with votes divided between Ryan Couldrey‘s TIME EATER, a chilling tale of doppelgangers and dementia, that offers an all-too-painfully accurate depiction of the temporal confusion and paranoid delusions of Alzheimer’s, and JEFF, Julia Hebner’s slippery morally troubling exploration of desire, guilt, exploitation, abuse, and sexual power games the Jury decided that this year’s best short award should go to both.
MELIES BEST EUROPEAN SHORT: UNDER THE ICE (Switzerland).
A clear winner in the European shorts category, Michel Kessler and David Oesch‘s visually astonishing short combines Lovecraftian themes with a psychedelic yet lyrical exploration of memory, guilt, and repressed trauma, pitched somewhere between 2001 and Tarkovsky.
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: BARI KANG for ITCH!
A no holds barred masterclass in visceral, emotionally gripping, high-impact, low-budget filmmaking, this nail bitingly tense single-location vision of the apocalypse is an absolute tour de force from Producer-Director-Writer-Star Bari Kang.
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: JORDANA STOTT for FORGIVE US ALL.
A creative triumph forged through persistence and vision, bringing a female-centred narrative to that most masculine of genres, the Western, reinventing established tropes and imbuing them with new depth and meaning.
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: DAN ASMA for TRIBE.
A vaultingly ambitious mix of layered, multimedia found footage, location-specific mythology, extreme paranoia, and cosmic horror, Dan Asma’s dazzling debut feature is both bone-chilling and mind-blowing.
ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION AWARD: WORMTOWN.
Sergio Pinheiro’s narratively complex, beautifully visualised film, with its immersive sense of environment and culture, multiple locations, and elaborate and visceral practical effects work was shot in only 13 days, for which we can only congratulate him, producers Andrew James Myers and Philip R. Garrett, and the whole team.
BEST NEWCOMER: AVANGELINE FRIEDLANDER in THE OTHER.
A remarkably assured, nuanced and complex performance, very much the beating heart of Paul Etheredge’s chilling sociopolitical spin on the “demon child” scenario.
DEBUT FEATURE AWARD: REMINGTON SMITH for LANDLORD and TIM CONNERY for THE DRIFTLESS. Joint Winners.
Hailing from a background in documentary, Smith combines a quietly observational style and strong social awareness with a smart, genre-savvy appreciation for classic horror tropes, to deliver a punchy meditation on racism, profiteering, and predation. And Tim Connery offers a lyrical, location-specific reinvention of the classic EC-style portmanteau horror, rooted in character and landscape, and lovingly visualised.
BEST COMEDY: DEVIANT and KOMBUCHA, joint award. Special mention: WEEKEND AT THE END OF THE WORLD.
Humour is always subjective, and so we found ourselves with another split vote, as Daniel M. Caneiro‘s queasy, uneasy, utterly outrageous (un)festive black-hearted farce, DEVIANT went head-to-head with Jake Myers‘ Cronenbergian office satire KOMBUCHA. And in the end, we split the difference – and the award itself – between them.
BEST ENSEMBLE CAST: LILY’S RITUAL. Special mention: I SEE THE DEMON
Sometimes, what impresses is less one individual performance, than the way in which a whole cast interacts and works together. Such was the case in Manu Herrera’s visually ravishing reinvention of classic 90s horror, and the performances of the film’s four remarkable leads, Maggie Garcia, Elena Gallardo, Patricia Peñalver, and Eve Ryan.
BEST SCARE: SQUEALERS. Special mention: I SEE THE DEMON & TRIBE.
Always a hotly contested category, as jurors’ debate what precisely constitutes a
“scare”, and whether to select a traditional “jump scare”, or something more…
intangible. SQUEALERS was a rare example of a film that delivered on both counts,
with its masterful use of space and shadow, and escalating oppressive mood.
BEST SCORE: RABBIT TRAP. Special mention: FRANKIE MANIAC WOMAN
A perfect example of a soundtrack that not only reflects but enhances the film’s sense of period and narrative detail from composer Lucrecia Dalt.
BEST VFX: WEEKEND AT THE END OF THE WORLD.
The consistently creative and witty VFX were a big part of the appeal of Gille Klabin’s dynamic, dimension-hopping dudebro horror-comedy.
BEST SFX: INCOMPLETE CHAIRS. Special mention: BEAST OF WAR and LILY’S RITUAL.
Among some striking and startling effects work this year, Kenichi Ugana’s INCOMPLETE CHAIRS stood out for its grisly, viscerally powerful and visually inventive practical make-up effects.
BEST ART DIRECTION: DEAD BY DAWN. Special mention: RABBIT TRAP.
Dawid Torrone’s flamboyant, theatre-bound slasher recreates and reboots the classic giallo in fine style.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: RABBIT TRAP. Special mention: DEAD BY DAWN and FORGIVE US ALL.
In a year of beautifully shot films, RABBIT TRAP earned particular praise for its quietly atmospheric visuals, making extraordinary use of the forest and rural landscape, and adding much to the film’s detailed sense of period from D.O.P Andreas Johannessen.
BEST SCREENPLAY: I SEE THE DEMON. Special mention: KOMBUCHA.
Kudos here for a unique concept, and a narrative twist that is carefully set up from the very first scene yet still shakes the viewer’s perceptions to the core. Congratulations to Martha Duzett, Jacob Lees Johnson and Davey Morrison.
BEST ACTING DUO: SHUHEI KINOSHITA and JEFFREY DECKER for SYPHON and JUAN PABLO VALESCO and RICARDO GALINA for DON’T LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE. Joint winners.
Every so often, a film depends on the chemistry and relationship between two actors, on their unique sparring and sparking off one another. This year the Jury wished to award two such instances: Shushei Kinoshita and Jeffrey Decker, for the complex psychological depth they bring to their increasingly physical conflict in Tom Botchii‘s bone-crunchingly brutal revenge drama; and Juan Pablo Valesco and Ricardo Galina, the “Kids”, in Emilio Portes’ DON’T LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE, whose entirely believable, bickering relationship gives the film much of its emotional heart.
BEST ACTOR IN A MALE ROLE: MARK COLE SMITH in BEAST OF WAR. Special mention: RYU ICHINOSE in INCOMPLETE CHAIRS.
Another award that led to much debate, but in the end, it was Mark Cole Smith’s charismatic tour de force lead in BEAST OF WAR, that won the day.
BEST ACTOR IN A FEMALE ROLE: DINA SILVA in FRANKIE MANIAC WOMAN. Special mention: ALEXIS ZOLLICOFFER in I SEE THE DEMON and KIM HIGELIN in SQUEALERS.
Another hotly contested award, but ultimately, Dina Silva swayed the Jury with her astonishingly physical, emotionally ferocious interpretation of the eponymous FRANKIE.
BEST DIRECTOR: KIAH ROACHE-TURNER for BEAST OF WAR. Special mention: JORDANA STOTT for FORGIVE US ALL
So many extraordinary films this year, so many extraordinarily imaginative and creative directors, but ultimately, the award had to go to Kiah Roache-Turner for the nail-biting and emotionally harrowing BEAST OF WAR.
BEST FEATURE: I SEE THE DEMON.
Very much a jury favourite, this was a film that was under serious consideration in many of the categories, so it is only right that it should take the laurels for this year’s Best Feature.
AUDIENCE AWARD: DON’T LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE
The votes are all in, and after a close-run contest, with only a few votes to separate the top five or six films, this year’s AUDIENCE AWARD goes to DON’T LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE, with LILY’S RITUAL a close second, and 3rd Place dividing up equally between GOOD BOY and KOMBUCHA.
Simeon Halligan Festival director said, ‘What an incredible year for Grimmfest! So many truly original independently made movies hailing from all corners of the globe. We welcomed so many of the film makers and actors, who ventured to Manchester UK to present their films and enjoy the experience. We thank them one and all for their wonderful cinematic creations and for trusting us to give them the big screen exposure they deserve’.
GRIMMFEST: Manchester’s International Festival of Fantastic Film. Grimmfest bring the very best in new independent genre cinema and classic genre films to Manchester UK and beyond, with regular screenings throughout the year and the main festival in early October. Grimmfest is now in its fifteenth year and was recently invited to join the Méliès International Festivals Federation, becoming its second British and first English member.
