2025 brings with it the 20th Fantastic Fest and the fifth time that I’m covering the festival for EoM. Past fests brought personal favorites like The Execution (2021), Baby Assassins (2021), Unicorn Wars (2022), The Last Stop in Yuma County (2023), and The Draft! (2024), so I’m stoked to discover what new favorites are hiding in this year’s crop of titles. As such, here’s a short-list of titles that may be well-worth building a schedule around.
**These recommendations are primarily based on reading the summaries and finding them intriguing. If I’m able to cover (or EoM has covered previously), the titles will be hyperlinked with a review – so be sure to check back.**
The 2025 Fantastic Fest takes place in Austin, Texas, from September 18th – 25th, 2025.
Angel’s Egg
Official Synopsis:
First released directly to home video in 1985, Angel’s Egg was produced by Tokuma Shoten and is a creative collaboration between internationally acclaimed director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost In The Shell), who wrote and directed the feature, and revered artist Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy; Vampire Hunter D). The film beautifully intertwines Oshii’s thematic reflections on philosophy and theology, with Amano’s distinctive ink painting style, culminating in an arrestingly beautiful hand-drawn allegorical fantasy. The 4K restoration has held an extensive festival debut prior to its theatrical rollout, having debuted at Cannes International Film Festival, with subsequent premieres at Fantasia Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, and New York Film Festival upcoming.
In an underwater city, a young girl takes care of a large egg she holds carefully in her arms – a treasure that she believes is an angel’s egg. A boy with a gun arrives in search of a bird he saw in his dream.
Body Blow
Official Synopsis:
Aiden, a young cop, embarks on a risky undercover mission where he meets Cody, a captivating male sex worker controlled by a drug lord drag queen. Aiden dives into a perilous world, getting entangled in a deadly police conspiracy.
Camp
Official Synopsis:
“I was marked by tragedy so early on, and now it’s completely covering me,” Emily tells her therapist after watching her best friend overdose and die right in front of her. This traumatic event happens almost immediately after Emily confesses to having accidentally killed a child with her car. To reset and see what healing might be found, Emily takes a summer job as a counselor at a Christian kids camp, despite not being religious. Luckily for her, she makes friends with other counselors who definitely don’t seem religious either: they drink, they smoke, they hook up with each other, and Emily suspects they are witches. She decides to see what power they can find together.
A scene from CAMP. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
Coyotes
Official Synopsis:
When a scorching wildfire hits the Hollywood Hills, a family is stranded as their neighborhood is destroyed and their home becomes a blazing prison. What begins as an intimate domestic drama quickly escalates into a pulse-pounding survival thriller as a pack of predatory coyotes disoriented by the fires tighten their perimeter around the house. Rendered powerless by collapsing roads and no electricity, the family must rely on their courage, resilience, and love for one another to survive both the inferno and the snarling threat outdoors.
Crazy Old Lady
Official Synopsis:
Laura is overwhelmed. As she drives cross-country with her daughter, her mother, Alicia, keeps calling—sounding confused and insisting that her nurse, Fernanda, has left. Alarmed, Laura begins to suspect that Alicia has stopped taking her medication. In a panic, she calls her ex-boyfriend, Pedro, and begs him to check in on her mother.
When Pedro arrives at the house, Alicia immediately begins acting strangely and admits she hasn’t been taking her pills. Soon, she starts to confuse Pedro with her first husband, César, from the era of the Argentine dictatorship. As Pedro tries to calm her and convince her to take her medication, Alicia slips further into delusion—fully convinced Pedro is César. What follows is a dark and violent game of cat and mouse between Alicia and Pedro, whose only goal is to survive the night in one piece.
A scene from CRAZY OLD LADY. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
The Curse
Official Synopsis:
Riko, a receptionist at a trendy salon in the city,, lives a quiet life in the city, sharing an apartment with her friend Airi. One day, Riko notices eerie changes in the social media posts of her Taiwanese friend Shufen, who starts uploading cryptic videos. Around the same time, a disfigured corpse washes ashore in Taiwan. When Riko’s attempts to contact Shufen fail, she teams up with her ex-boyfriend Jiahao to investigate, only to discover that Shufen died six months ago. However, her social media continues to post disturbing messages. Soon, supernatural occurrences plague Riko and Airi, leading to Airi’s horrifying death. Desperate for answers, Riko heads to Taiwan with Jiahao and Shufen’s sister Huijun to uncover the terrifying truth.
Deathstalker
Official Synopsis:
In Deathstalker, the Kingdom of Abraxeon is under siege by the Dreadites, heralds of the long-dead sorcerer Nekromemnon. When Deathstalker recovers a cursed amulet from a corpse-strewn battlefield, he’s marked by dark magick and hunted by monstrous assassins. To survive, he must break the curse and face the rising evil. Death is just the beginning… of great adventure!
Decorado
Official Synopsis:
The team behind the outrageous Unicorn Wars (Fantastic Fest 2022) is back with a highly anticipated feature-length adaptation of Alberto Vázquez’s acclaimed 2016 short film, Decorado. Bearing the same title, the film expands the story of Arnold, a middle-aged mouse in the eerily named city of Anywhere, who spirals into an existential crisis after becoming convinced his entire world is nothing more than a stage and his life a scripted performance.
Arnold’s disillusionment intensifies when his best friend, Ramiro, dies under mysterious circumstances and he uncovers that Anywhere is controlled by a monolithic corporation, ALMA (Almighty Limitless Megacorporative Agency), whose influence reaches every corner of their daily lives. Through paranoia and outright rebellion, Arnold devises an escape plan alongside his ghostly companion, the enigmatic Mr. Mushroom, and his wife, Maria, to finally break free of this staged existence.
Don’t Leave the Kids Alone
Official Synopsis:
After her babysitter cancelled at the last minute, single mother Catalina is forced to leave her two children, Matías and Emiliano, to their own devices to finalize the deed on her newly acquired auction house on Elm Street—what’s the worst that could happen? What starts off as an exciting adventure filled with 80s nostalgia, TV, pizza, and no bedtime quickly gives in to the existing tension between the two brothers in this chilling psychological horror that blends children’s shenanigans with the presence of a haunted house.
The new home seems to breathe and groan in ways they can’t quite explain. Objects shift. Whispers echo from empty rooms. As the night stretches on and the power flickers, the brothers must navigate not only the strange happenings within the house but also their own volatile relationship, where trust is fragile and fear runs deep. Are they victims of an overactive imagination, or is something truly lurking in the walls?
We all remember what it was like to be afraid of the dark as a child—some of us might even still feel that slight nervousness when switching the lights off every night.
A scene from DON’T LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
The Evil That Binds Us
Official Synopsis:
Chile, 1957. Helmut and his son Daniel arrive at a remote farm owned by a family of German expatriates. It’s Daniel’s first time meeting his cousins, Hilda and Hermann. Although his father is German, Daniel doesn’t speak the language—making it even harder to connect with his relatives when Helmut abruptly leaves him behind to attend to business. While his strict aunt Dorothea takes it upon herself to teach him German, Daniel soon realizes something is deeply wrong: both his cousins are unhinged.
Isolated and lonely, Daniel forms a forbidden friendship with Emita, the housekeeper’s daughter—an act that defies the rigid social codes of the household, where the upper class does not mix with servants. As Daniel uncovers the truth about his late mother’s connection to this unsettling family, he begins to rebel against the cruel conventions around him—determined to deliver justice.
A scene from THE EVIL THAT BINDS US. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
Find Your Friends
Official Synopsis:
Set against cinematic desert scenery, what starts as a wild girls trip quickly turns dangerous when the locals don’t want them there. As the hostile environment escalates, Amber’s friends uncover her past trauma and become fed up with toxic dynamics. Little do they know, their fun trip will transform into one of revenge—building to a jaw-dropping finale that audiences will never forget.
A scene from FIND YOUR FRIENDS. Photo courtesy of Fantasia International Film Festival.
The Forbidden City
Official Synopsis:
The son of an indebted restaurant owner joins a foreign girl in search of her sister. Together, they’ll have to fight side by side against the most ruthless members of the Roman criminal underworld.
Haunted Heist
Official Synopsis:
A newly released ex-con gathers his longtime group of friends for a reunion. But there’s a catch. He’s not just here to reminisce; he’s here to steal a highly prized antique rumored to be hidden in the place he ‘rented’ for the get-together. And there’s another catch—the house is haunted. Forced to contend with a bunch of goofy ghosts, the friends have to put aside their differences and work together if they want to survive the night.
Actors Andrew Bachelor, Tiffany Haddish, Kat Williams, and Lil Rel Howery in a scene from HAUNTED HEIST. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
Her Will Be Done
Official Synopsis:
Trapped in a small French village by a loving but overprotective father and a failing farm she helps keep running, Nawojka longs to go to veterinary school and get away from her brothers-turned-bullies and her judgemental small town.
But her real problem is the demonic curse that she inherited from her mother—the one that apparently killed said mother and plagues her constantly, filling her head with demented visions that seem to keep coming true.
When she’s not caring for the family cows or cooking for her ungrateful siblings, she’s praying and spending her nights in agony as she tries to resist the pull of evil.
And then Sandra shows up. The ‘bad girl’ daughter of the recently deceased couple next door, Sandra wants to be in the town as much as the villagers seem to want her there—that is to say, not at all. Except Nawojka. Whether it’s the allure of freedom or of forbidden love is unclear at first, but the very sight of Sandra awakens something in Nawojka. At the same time, Sandra sees the truth in Nawojka—that she needs to get away from the overbearing small minds around her.
A scene from HER WILL BE DONE. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
The Ice Tower
Official Synopsis:
Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower is an enchanting, icy reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen set in 1970s France. The film unfolds as a mesmerizing, cinematic fairy tale, blending the surrealism of dreams with the raw emotions of a coming-of-age drama. Sixteen-year-old Jeanne (Clara Pacini in her lead debut) escapes a mountain orphanage and discovers refuge in a lonely film studio where Cristina (Marion Cotillard), the enigmatic star cast as the Snow Queen, is shooting a lavish adaptation of the tale.
Mārama
Official Synopsis:
North Yorkshire, 1859. Mary, a young Māori woman from Aotearoa New Zealand, travels to England to meet with Boyd, a man who claims to have information about her biological parents. When informed by Nathaniel Cole, a wealthy benefactor, that Boyd died of pox, Mary is disheartened. Cole, a man fascinated by the Māoris, offers Mary a place in his home as a governess to his daughter.
But as Mary settles into this foreign world, she begins to sense something darker beneath Cole’s fascination with Māori culture as his sinister obsession slowly comes to light. As the truth unravels, Mary is compelled to reclaim her heritage and her true name, Mārama, setting her on a path of reckoning and vengeance against the man who defiled her culture.
A scene from MĀRAMA. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
Mother of Flies
Official Synopsis:
When a young woman faces a deadly diagnosis, she seeks dark magic from a witch in the woods… but every cure has costs.
Toby Poser in MOTHER OF FLIES. Photo courtesy of Yellow Veil Pictures/Shudder/Independent Film Company.
Night Patrol
Official Synopsis:
In Night Patrol, an LAPD officer must put aside his differences with the area’s street gangs when he discovers a local police task force is harboring a horrific secret that endangers the residents of the housing projects he grew up in.
A scene from NIGHT PATROL. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
Road to Vendetta
Official Synopsis:
Within the opening moments of NJO Kui Ying’s visually arresting debut feature, a visceral fistfight breaks out on the top floor of a Hong Kong city tram. Bodies hang precariously from the windows in a tangle of flesh and blood that soon leaves one man dead, while the other coolly walks away, shrugging off just another day in the life of a trained assassin. Known only as No. 4, this bleach-blond, stone-faced killer soon finds himself in Japan, where a seemingly straightforward assignment quickly spirals into a breathless game of cat-and-mouse with the Yakuza’s deadliest foot soldiers.
A scene from ROAD TO VENDETTA. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
Silver Screamers
Official Synopsis:
Guided by Canadian award-winning filmmaker Sean Cisterna, the seniors take on every film-set challenge, building DIY special effects on a shoestring budget, navigating on-set drama, and defying every stereotype about what seniors can do.
SISU: Road to Revenge
Official Synopsis:
SISU: Road To Revenge is a wall-to-wall cinematic action event, a sequel to the original sleeper hit SISU. Returning to the house where his family was brutally murdered during the war, “the man who refuses to die” (Jorma Tommila) dismantles it, loads it on a truck, and is determined to rebuild it somewhere safe in their honor. When the Red Army commander who killed his family (Stephen Lang from Don’t Breathe) comes back hellbent on finishing the job, a relentless, eye-popping cross-country chase ensues – a fight to the death, full of clever, unbelievable action set pieces.
A Useful Ghost
Official Synopsis:
After the untimely passing of his wife, Nat, due to dust pollution, March is tormented not only by sorrow but also by the restless spirits that haunt his family’s crumbling household appliance factory. His late wife returns as one of those spirits, refusing to move on by possessing an old vacuum cleaner, setting March’s life on a surreal path of acceptance and reconciliation.
Past the initial absurdity of the situation, their love is rekindled, and their bond grows stronger than ever despite the family’s rejection and skepticism towards this supernatural relationship. Nat then seeks redemption as “a useful ghost” and offers to clean the factory from more malevolent presences in order to gain the family’s trust once again. With a compelling ensemble cast and a surprising finale, the film deftly balances visual whimsy with sobering environmental themes and emotional depth.
A scene from A USEFUL GHOST. Photo courtesy of Fantastic Fest.
About Fantastic Fest:
Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the US, championing challenging and thought-provoking cinema while celebrating new voices and new stories from filmmakers around the world. We collaborate with other festivals, archives, cinematheques, and individuals to spotlight lesser-known film regions and luminaries in an ongoing effort to expand the general knowledge and appreciation of cinema. Supporting film in its most provocative, ground-breaking, and under seen forms is our all-consuming passion, giving audiences a chance to find new favorites and future genre classics in the process.
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Categories: Coming Soon, Recommendation
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