From 21 to 25 August, the UK’s number one horror and fantasy film festival takes over the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square and Odeon Luxe West End with sixty nine features, twenty five main screen premieres, forty four Discovery Screen titles, and an unmissable queer presence.

This year’s FrightFest celebrates diversity and fearless storytelling, with LGBTQ+ filmmakers, characters, and themes threaded through some of its most anticipated films.

Queer and LGBTQ+ highlights

• The Serpent’s Skin – Australian transgender filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay (T-Blockers, Carnage for Christmas) returns with a supernatural romance where love and gender identity collide with a deadly demon.
• Salt Along the Tongue – Parish Malfitano blends witchcraft, possession, and surreal visuals in an all-female tale of grief and redemption.
• The Red Mask – A queer screenwriter retreats to an isolated Airbnb to cure writer’s block, but a deadly game turns this into a love letter to stalk-and-slash cinema.

• Don’t Let the Cat Out – Tim Cruz and Anthony Del Negro follow up their 2024 FrightFest hit Ladybug with a camp feline-obsessed horror.
• Sane Inside Insanity: The Rocky Horror Phenomenon – A 50th anniversary documentary that dives deep into the queer midnight movie legend.
• The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan – A portrait of one of queer cinema’s most controversial pioneers, featuring candid interviews and rare clips.
• Daughters of Darkness – Harry Kümel’s 1971 erotic vampire classic returns in stunning 4K.

Beyond the queer focus
The opening night UK premiere is James DeMonaco’s The Home, a haunted-house chiller starring Pete Davidson. The closing film, Kurtis David Harder’s Influencers, builds on the acclaim of his earlier Influencer with a seductive and unsettling social media suspense tale.

Elsewhere in the main programme:

• Gill – A Korean animation from Jae-hoon Ahn about found family and the scars we carry.
• Malpertuis – Kümel’s surreal 1971 fantasy starring Orson Welles, newly restored in 4K.
• Bambi: The Reckoning – A dark reimagining of the Disney classic from the team behind the Poohniverse.
• The Descent – Neil Marshall’s 2005 British horror returns for a 4K anniversary screening.
• Bone Lake, The Rows, Redux Redux, Odyssey, Jimmy and Stiggs, and dozens more, spanning slashers, supernatural thrillers, folk horror, and genre-bending experiments.

The Discovery Screens champion new voices through the First Blood strand, short film showcases, and international premieres. From Thai supernatural drama Mother of Flies to French survival satire Flush and Korean fantasy Gill, the range is as broad as it is bold.

FrightFest remains a place where filmmakers, fans, and curious newcomers share big-screen scares in a lively, welcoming atmosphere. In 2025, it proves again that queer horror is not a side note but part of the genre’s beating heart.

Full programme and tickets: frightfest.co.uk