9-12 October, Odeon Great Northern, Manchester UK.
The 2025 edition of Grimmfest is set to bring four nights of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and the uncanny to Manchester, running from October 9 to 12 at the Odeon Great Northern.
PAST LIFE
When a traumatised former war reporter is hypnotized as part of a past life regression event, he awakes not with memories of a glamorous previous existence, but finds himself instead haunted by the memories of a 1980s serial killer.
WEEKEND AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Best friends Karl and Miles, who find themselves in a secluded cabin in the woods with what they think is an opportunity to get rich, with the only thing standing in their way being the end of the world.
ITCH!
As a horrific plague rages through the city, turning its victims into frenzied, self-destructive shells of their former selves, grieving widower Jay seeks refuge in his family’s department store alongside his estranged young daughter, Olivia, and several disgruntled employees. With the infection closing in and paranoia escalating within the group, Jay and Olivia are forced into a harrowing battle for survival.
LANDLORD
When a black bounty hunter moves into a rundown apartment complex, she finds herself forced to protect an orphaned boy from the predatory white landlord.
FRANKIE MANIAC WOMAN
Battling against the legacy of childhood trauma, internalised misogyny, and the image-obsessed fat shaming of the LA music business, aspiring singer-songwriter Frankie Ramirez finally snaps, with bloody results…
INCOMPLETE CHAIRS
An obsessive, psychopathically perfectionist furniture designer takes his desire to create the perfect chair to truly… excessive lengths.
SQUEALERS
A group of young activists breaks into a slaughterhouse, aiming to expose the owners for processing meat unfit for consumption. Armed with cameras, they capture damning evidence only to be caught by the owner and his security team. A desperate struggle over the filmed footage quickly escalates into a deadly game.
DEVIANT
As Christmas looms, a put-upon and sexually frustrated husband, feeling neglected by his wife following the birth of a child he has started to suspect isn’t his, makes the mistake of trying out a new “hook up” App…
FORGIVE US ALL
In a post-apocalyptic world, a virus has transformed humans into violently deranged cannibals. A bereaved mother has lost everything and takes refuge in an isolated mountain cabin, until a desperate wounded stranger arrives with a story of hope.
KOMBUCHA
Luke Merritt lands a job at the cult-like Symbio Corporation, where a mind-altering kombucha turns employees into productive corporate cogs. As the drink begins to erase his identity, his ex-girlfriend Elyse uncovers Symbio’s grotesque secret: a monstrous Mother at the heart of the company, churning out obedient clones. With Luke slipping beyond reach, Elyse must race to save him and destroy the source before the company consumes him completely.
THE OTHER
After years of struggling with infertility, Robin and Daniel, realise their dreams of parenthood by adopting Kathelia, a mute orphan, with a dark and mysterious past. But Kathelia’s erratic behaviour proves increasingly alarming, and before long strange and inexplicable occurrences begin to plague their lives…
BEAST OF WAR
1942. A warship carrying hundreds of Australian soldiers across the Timor Sea to the frontline of WW2 is sunk by Japanese fighter planes, leaving a handful of raw recruit soldiers adrift on a makeshift raft in treacherous, shark-infested waters. Can they work together to survive, or will the various tensions between them prove as fatal as the apex predators circling beneath them.
GOOD BOY
A loyal dog moves to a rural family home with his owner Todd, only to discover supernatural forces lurking in the shadows. As dark entities threaten his human companion, the brave pup must fight to protect the one he loves most.
I SEE THE DEMON
At her surprise birthday party, an emotionally fragile woman begins experiencing disturbing, otherworldly phenomena—threatening to turn the best night of her life into a never-ending nightmare.
DON’T LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE
A couple of bickering young brothers left to fend for themselves in their new home start to suspect that they are not really alone in the house at all…
TRIBE + MISSING PARTS
A retired university lecturer’s investigation into the mysterious death of an old friend leads to time loss, amnesia, chilling conspiracies and cover-ups, and cataclysmic cosmic horrors. A wild tale of desert religious cults, lost subterranean civilisations, mind control, pan-dimensional entities, and an entirely alien computer operating system that acts as a virus on our own software and records and plays back our darkest dreams, memories, and imaginings.
SYPHON
A computer hacker finds himself the target of a vengeful victim of his crimes.
RABBIT TRAP + LOUD
Musicians Daphne and Darcy Davenport have move from London to a cottage in Wales to complete their new album. But their field recordings capture something unearthly, and their hold on reality starts to become increasingly tenuous.
THE DRIFTLESS
Deep river valleys, tall limestone bluffs sawing through the sky… thousands of years ago, this unique portion of the Midwest escaped the crushing effects of the giant Ice Age glaciers. But with its scenic beauty, this preserved primal landscape also conceals unimaginable terrors: Mississippi river cults, inescapable addictions, lives not lived and blood-thirsty vengeance from beyond the grave. Four terrifying tales of the macabre Midwest.
LILY’S RITUAL
Autumn Equinox, late 20th century. Four friends travel to an isolated house deep in the forest to perform a witchcraft initiation ritual and complete the circle of the four elements. Lily, a pale and introverted twenty-something who has just joined the group, has been chosen to represent the element of air. But she has no idea that the true purpose of the ritual is something else entirely.
WORMTOWN
One year into a plague of flesh-eating, mind-altering worms, the nocturnal town of Ashland, Ohio, has embraced the parasites’ rule. Under cult-like Mayor Joshua, zealous Ranchers spread their gospel—by persuasion or by force. A trio of uninfected women cling to survival through scavenging, extreme hygiene, and evasion. But everyone breaks eventually.
DEAD BY DAWN
Actors rehearsing at the mysterious Heissenhoff theatre find themselves being stalked by a masked killer, and realise that they are to be the sacrifices in an elaborately planned occult ritual.
SHORTS PROGRAMME ONE: FAMILY VALUES
This programme explores parental responsibilities and abuses, filial resentments and revenges, sibling guilt, and grandmotherly anxiety, in a series of tales that reminds us that blood ties can get tangled… and bloody.
A father strives to provide for his family, in Jorge Sermini’s body horror fairy tale, DAUGHTER, with astonishing practical effects by Steven Kostanski (PSYCHO GOREMAN).
A father and daughter fight for survival in a world on the brink of collapse, in HUNTER, Pavlos Sifaki’s chilling study of dehumanisation.
A young man’s desire for closure becomes the most brutal revenge imaginable, in Javier Méndez Cañada’s grotesque folk horror nightmare, MU.
A confused grandmother begins to suspect there are mysterious invaders in the house, in TIME EATER, Ryan Couldrey’s powerful study of the terrors of dementia.
A phone sex worker finds herself faced with a horrifying moral dilemma in Julia Habner’s deeply uncomfortable and disturbing JEFF.
And a desperate gambler would do anything to get his brother back, in Cameron Voris’s quietly savage WHOLE.
SHORTS PROGRAMME TWO: AWKWARD
We offer uncomfortable situations, performance anxieties, social faux pas, peer group pressures, the tentative, treacherous nature of romance, and the slippery, competitive nature of friendship, in a series of tales in which things get a little, well… awkward.
A would-be swinger quickly realises she’s out of her depth in Sam Fox’s louche, loungecore “Jazz Horror”, OPEN WIDE.
A man in search of a parking space quickly comes to regret picking up a hitchhiker, in Brian Lederman’s claustrophobic black comedy CROWDED OUT.
A woman under pressure takes refuge in a self-actualisation tape, in Emily Bennett’s mischievous monologue movie AFFIRMATION.
A young gay woman starts to fear that her girlfriend’s self-described “femme” friends are not at all what they appear in Allie Perison’s sharply satiric SHE DEVIL.
A young woman starts to feel distinctly uncomfortable during a second date, in Joe Savage’s pitch-black comedy of modern romantic mores, ITCH.
A young woman’s desire to make new friends places her in danger from a sinister party game in Jordan Pfeifer’s chilling CALL EARL.
A young girl’s obsession with obtaining a much-coveted collectable figurine is thwarted by her pet gerbil in Renaud Parra’s riotous black comedy, DAMSEL IN GEEKSTRESS.
An over-sharing young man seems way too determined to tell us all about his wonderful girlfriend in Alexandra Warrick’s darkly satiric and deeply disturbing Y.M.G.
And James P. Gleason offers the ultimate Nightmare Dentist story, in the outrageously mean-spirited comedy, BABY BLUES – GOING DARK.