The 2025 Fantasia Film Festival kicks off in Montreal July 16 for nineteen days of blood-soaked, neon-drenched, mind-scrambling cinematic insanity! The Fantasia Film Festival is a MASSIVE celebration of everything weird, wild, and wonderfully absurd, and holy shit! do the weirdos in Montreal know how to throw one hell of a party.
Seriously, if you’ve never been you should really make the trip to Montreal. Fantasia has one of the absolute best genre audiences in the world. Not to mention the best poutine in the entire country! Anyway, here’s a bunch of Horror movies we’re dying to see (and few we’re dying to rewatch) at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
Click HERE for more information, and to purchase tickets.
Influencers
World Premiere
Directed by: Kurtis David Harder
We’re in the South of France, and CW [returning from Kurtis David Harder’s 2022 indie hit Influencer] is in love. Her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar, SURVIVE) is a French beauty, and they are smitten with each other. Taking off for a weekend getaway to celebrate their first anniversary, the women have been bumped into a smaller room because of a popular British influencer, Charlotte (Georgina Campbell, LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP, BARBARIAN), and CW isn’t happy. Charlotte has taken a liking to the couple and won’t leave them alone. Her shallow, constant commentary irks CW, testing her patience. What will CW do? Does this threaten CW’s relationship? Is this the trigger that sets off her deadly disdain for influencers? Many questions are presented, and the audience is invited to dive into the heart of our favourite hedonistic hacker, where obsession and revenge live rent-free.
Mother of Flies
World Premiere
Directed by: John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
“One day to die, three days to rise.” Shaken to her core after being diagnosed with cancer, young Mickey (Zelda Adams) turns to necromancy to heal herself after conventional medicine fails to help. Her father, Jake (John Adams), is not a religious man, but any skepticism he might hold takes a backseat to supporting his daughter’s decision. And so, they embark on a journey, driving deep into the woods to meet with a witch who resides there. Her name is Solveig (Toby Poser), and they will be her guests for the transformative days to come. She will guide Mickey through a journey of discovery, ritual, and blood. Solveig is offering her dark magic guidance free of charge. That’s not to say that it will come without costs.
The Book of Sijjin And Illiyyin
World Premiere
Directed by:
Having seen her mother possessed by terrible pain before killing her father when she was a child, Yuli (Yunita Siregar from the popular TV series RATU ADIL) was treated as an outsider, a bastard. Twenty years have passed since then. She is now a servant to a large, wealthy family, but she is still considered an outcast. Constantly scorned, insulted, and even beaten by her employers, she tries to satisfy their demands and whims by holding back the anger and grief she has accumulated over so many years, until one humiliation too many occurs. That’s when she goes into the forest to meet a hermit who practises black magic, to curse the Laras clan, from the youngest to the oldest, who mistreat her in so many ways. Yuli wants them all to die horribly. So she sends after them a most powerful djinn, an entity that is sometimes benevolent but in this case demonic, exhuming the fresh corpse of the Laras’ ancestress and offering it as a sacrifice in a most disturbing ritual. The task must be completed before the body is too decomposed. Let the party begin…
Good Boy
Canadian Premiere
Directed by: Ben Leonberg
From the first moment you see him, you know that Indy (playing himself) is a very good boy, as loyal as a dog can be to his human, Todd (Shane Jensen). Todd has uprooted Indy to his late grandfather’s (Larry Fessenden!) remote house upstate, and before he even sets foot in the house, Indy can sense something’s not right. It’s not just that the house is in the middle of nowhere and seriously dilapidated, there’s something there that Indy can sense that Todd cannot. Todd has his own problems—he’s dealing with a mysterious illness and a worried sister (Arielle Friedman) who won’t let him be, and he can’t see what Indy sees. And what Indy sees is a mysterious presence that draws his suspicions while also drawing him in. Indy can only do so much to warn his human (he’s a dog, after all), but he’s going to protect him with all his heart before what’s haunting this house comes for them both. Because Indy is not just a good boy, he may be the bravest and smartest boy of all.
Read our Full Review of Good Boy HERE
Together
Canadian Premiere
Directed by: Michael Shanks
Millie (Alison Brie) and Tim (Dave Franco) have been a couple for 10 years of unwed…well, not exactly bliss, and the fraying ends of their relationship are about to become seriously unraveled. Millie has just won a teaching job that requires them to move away from the city, and all their friends, to a house in the middle of a forested area. What we already know, and they realize too late, is that there’s an uncanny energy dwelling within those woods, and even as Millie and Tim’s interpersonal anxieties drive them further apart, that force begins to bind them in both figurative and literal ways. As their bodies begin a symbiotic relationship that expresses itself even when they’re separated, they’re forced to take drastic measures to prevent themselves from being joined together… forever.
Sugar Rot
Quebec Premiere
Directed by: Becca Kozak
SUGAR ROT may be candy-coloured, but its embrace of pink avoids anything cute or twee. This isn’t a bubblegum pink film; it’s Pepto-Bismol pink, genital pink, earthworm pink. Set in an ice-cream shop, Becca Kozak’s film is a relentless sensory onslaught—depraved, delicious, and unafraid to plunge into the darkest, dankest corners of the imagination. When punk girl Candy is brutally assaulted by an ice-cream man, she becomes the host of a mutant fetus, and her body begins to transform into ice cream. Featuring music from Pet Blessings, Dayglo Abortions, and Daddy Issues, SUGAR ROT channels the anarchic spirit of punk to tell a fiercely feminist story about autonomy, capitalism, and pleasure. With its cathartic cartoon gore and biting satire of anti-feminist rhetoric, it’s a bold and sticky scream of rebellion.
The Wailing
Canadian Premiere
Directed by: Pedro Martín-Calero
In modern-day Madrid, Andrea’s world is being turned violently upside-down, haunted by a terrifying entity that she can neither see, understand, or explain. Twenty years ago, thousands of miles away, in La Plata, Marie is being tormented by the very same presence. A third woman, Camila, has a gut-wrenching understanding of what’s happening, but nobody will believe her. In their darkest moments, each will hear the same, terrible sound. A ghostly wailing will overwhelm their senses.
Queens of The Dead
International Premiere
Directed by: Tina Romero
It’s Easter in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and a different kind of resurrection is at hand. Dre (LOVE LIES BLEEDING breakout Katy O’Brian) is putting on a warehouse drag show, trying to deal with her lead performer’s last-minute cancellation, among other problems. One that she never could have imagined is a zombie apocalypse breaking out in her neighbourhood, which besieges her and her team while her wife Lizzy (Riki Lindhome, THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW), a nurse at a local hospital, tries to dodge the flesh-eating hordes and get across town to Dre. As the trapped party crew deal with various interpersonal issues—most notably the sudden return of Sam, a.k.a. Samoncé (Jaquel Spivey, MEAN GIRLS), some time after abandoning Dre and her show at a crucial moment—they’re forced to resolve their differences and find a way to band together and survive.
Redux Redux
Canadian Premiere
Directed by: Kevin McManus & Matthew McManus
Desperate to avenge her daughter’s murder by any means necessary, Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus) journeys through parallel dimensions to repeatedly track down and annihilate her killer (Jeremy Holm, HOUSE OF CARDS). Deliverance by any kind of weapon. Every kind of weapon. All she can do is stab, shoot, and maim with a rage that’s devouring her, yet gives her singular purpose and meaning. Even as it threatens to corrode her humanity beyond any possible point of return. Then, one day… no, no further plot reveals.
Read our Full Review of Redux Redux HERE
Noise
North American Premiere
Directed by: Kim Soo-jin
Joo-young (Lee Sun-bin) moves into a new apartment with her young sister Ju-hee (Han Soo-a), in a seemingly quiet neighbourhood. Joo-young has a hearing impediment and wears hearing aids, but her ears start to sense intense and eerie noises in her own home. After her sister suddenly disappears, she eventually begins to realize it has something to do with those creepy sounds she has been hearing, while also noticing a sinister entity that is coming after her. As she’s being haunted by these disturbing noises, she will now discover the dark truth behind Ju-hee’s mysterious vanishing and the ominous presence surrounding her apartment.
The 2025 Fantasia Film Festival kicks off July 16 in beautiful Montreal, Canada. Let us know if you’re planning a trip to Montreal this summer, and which Horror movies you’re most excited to see over in the official Nightmare on Film Street Discord!
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