FrightFest 2025: Five Days of Delicious Dread in the Heart of London
It’s August in London, the weather’s doing that classic British thing where it can’t decide if it wants to rain or shine, and somewhere in Leicester Square, horror fans are queuing up like it’s the midnight release of a new iPhone – except instead of the latest tech, they’re in line for premium nightmares.
Welcome to FrightFest 2025, where your summer bank holiday just got significantly more twisted.
Now in its 26th year, FrightFest has evolved from a scrappy upstart at the Prince Charles Cinema to the UK’s premier horror extravaganza. Founded in 2000 by four visionaries who clearly understood that Britain needed more sophisticated ways to be terrified, the festival has become the Glastonbury of gore – minus the mud, plus considerably more fake blood.
This year’s lineup reads like a fever dream curated by someone with impeccable taste in terror. We’re talking sixty-nine features, including nineteen world premieres, because the world needs more reasons to sleep with the lights on. The festival kicks off with “The Home,” featuring Pete Davidson in what might be the most unexpected career pivot since Justin Timberlake decided to start acting. Davidson plays Max, a defiant twenty-something sentenced to community service at a retirement home – which, knowing Davidson’s comedy background, probably means we’re in for either the most unexpectedly heartwarming horror film ever, or watching him get systematically eliminated by vengeful seniors wielding walkers as weapons (or maybe a lineup of angry – but super-hot – exes ready to do him in).
The festival closes with “Influencers,” a tale of existential dread and social media culture gone completely off the rails. Set in southern France, it follows a young woman whose fascination with murder and identity theft creates chaos – essentially “Single White Female” meets “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” but with better WiFi and more followers.
But let’s dive into some exclusive intel… Red River Horror got the VIP treatment with advance screenings of two festival highlights.
Self-Help: Therapy Session from Hell
The Bloomquist brothers are back, and they’ve traded their slasher sensibilities for something far more insidious: cult psychology. “Self-Help” follows Olivia as she infiltrates a self-actualization group that makes Scientology look like a book club. With her mother romantically entangled with the group’s leader, Olivia finds herself in a psychological maze that would make Freud reach for his strongest cigars.
The brothers have crafted something genuinely clever here; a horror film that knows the real terror isn’t necessarily the masked killer lurking in shadows, but the insidious way toxic positivity can weaponize our deepest insecurities. It’s “Midsommar” meets “The Invitation,” with a dash of “Get Out” social commentary thrown in for good measure.
The cinematography deserves special mention – those opening sequences featuring color-saturated visuals and creepy clowns create an atmosphere so unsettling, you’ll question whether your own self-help books might be plotting against you. It’s proof that the Bloomquist brothers understand that the most effective horror doesn’t just make you jump; it makes you think, then immediately regret thinking.
The Haunted Forest: When Your Job Literally Kills
“The Haunted Forest” takes the classic ‘cursed workplace’ trope and gives it a millennial twist. Zach, our horror-obsessed protagonist, lands his dream job as a scare actor at a haunted attraction, which is like saying you’ve always wanted to work at Disneyland, except instead of making children’s dreams come true, you’re professionally traumatizing them for minimum wage. Zach is supposedly a high school student but that doesn’t wash – unlike the comic-style illustrations he creates, which are spot-on.
Director Keith Boynton understands that the best horror often comes from taking something we think we understand (in this case, seasonal Halloween entertainment), then revealing the genuine darkness lurking beneath the manufactured scares. When real death crashes the fake funeral party, the film explores our culture’s complex relationship with mortality and our tendency to commodify fear for entertainment.
The film takes its time building atmosphere (a bit too much time, clocking in at thirty minutes before the real scares begin), but once it finds its rhythm, it delivers both laughs and frights. It’s “Scream” meets “The Final Girls,” with enough meta-commentary to satisfy horror geeks while still delivering the less-gory goods for casual fright fans.
The Bigger Picture
FrightFest 2025 represents more than just five days of quality scares – it’s a celebration of genre filmmaking that refuses to be marginalized. In an era where studios often treat horror as either mindless gore-fests or elevated art pieces that forget to be scary, festivals like this remind us that the best horror can be intelligent, innovative, and genuinely frightening all at once.
The festival’s commitment to showcasing both emerging voices and established masters creates a unique ecosystem where Pete Davidson can share screen time with restored classics, where indie filmmakers get the same treatment as franchise veterans. It’s democracy in action, if democracy involved significantly more fake blood and jump scares.
So whether you’re a horror veteran who cut their teeth on Hammer films or a newcomer whose idea of scary is unfollowing someone on Instagram, FrightFest 2025 promises five days of premium nightmares in the heart of London. Just remember to pack your sense of humor along with your courage – you’re going to need both.
FrightFest 2025 runs August 21-25 at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square, London. Tickets are available now, sleep optional but not recommended.
