Fantastic Fest 2025 First Wave is EPIC

Austin is about to become the eye of the cinematic hurricane again. You know here at Signal Horizon we feel like Fantastic Fest is the crown jewel of weird and wonderful genre cinema, is blowing out twenty candles this September 18–25 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar. And in true Fantastic Fest style, the birthday bash is not just a party. It is an eight-day monster marathon of premieres, restorations, lunatic events, and probably at least one screening where a director hands you a drink and says “You might need this.”

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Festival director Lisa Dreyer puts it simply. “We’re turning the fest into an eight-day celebration of cinematic excellence and excess.” With forty-five world premieres and a shiny new $100,000 pitch competition for independent filmmakers, Fantastic Fest 2025 is both looking back at two decades of chaos and charging into the future with blood-soaked optimism.

The Big Bookends

This year’s festival opens with the world premiere of Primate, Johannes Roberts’ tropical nightmare from Paramount Pictures. A group of friends head to paradise and instead get gory, primal survival horror led by Johnny Sequoyah and Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur. It hits theaters in January, but festival audiences will be the first to see Roberts swing for the jugular.

The party closes with Whistle, a Shudder and Independent Film Company offering from The Nun’s Corin Hardy and writer Owen Edgerton. It follows high schoolers who find an ancient Aztec death whistle and accidentally unleash a curse. The kills are spectacularly gruesome, the pace relentless, and the moral lesson clear. Stop picking up cursed objects.

The Studio Heavyweights

If Fantastic Fest were a buffet, the studio titles would be the prime rib. Blumhouse is back with Black Phone 2, taking Scott Derrickson’s supernatural hit into darker family territory. Bryan Bertino (The Strangers) returns with Vicious, promising chills from Paramount. Speaking of The Strangers, Renny Harlin is delivering Chapter 2, doubling down on masked menace.

Sony brings Sisu: Road to Revenge, a sequel so committed to topping the first film that it involves dismantling a house and hauling it cross-country while being chased by Stephen Lang. Lionsgate unleashes The Strangers – Chapter 2, Universal brings Black Phone 2, and A24 drops the Texas premiere of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a kinetic drama starring Rose Byrne, Christian Slater, and A$AP Rocky.

Shudder, as always, is in the middle of the action with V/H/S/Halloween, Crazy Old Lady, and an early peek at season two of The Creep Tapes.

New Blood and Wild Ideas

The Burnt Ends sidebar remains the festival’s petri dish for mutant cinema. This year it includes Theater is Dead, a horror-theater mashup that suggests stage kids might be scarier than clowns. Dinner to Die For serves culinary horror with a true-crime glaze. Penance promises fists, blood, and more fists. There is also a stop-motion cosmic horror (Shrine of Abominations), an offbeat crime thriller (Tie Man), and enough genre experimentation to make midnight audiences question their life choices.

New initiatives are also in play. Fantastic Pitches will let finalists pitch projects live for a shot at that $100,000 funding prize and a distribution deal. Director Matt Johnson (Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie) is among the jury, so expect both sharp advice and at least one curveball.

Restorations and Rarities

Fantastic Fest’s relationship with the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) continues to bear glorious fruit. This year includes a freshly preserved 90s slasher (Embalmer), a new restoration of Cruel Jaws (the ultimate shark ripoff), and a 35mm screening of Thai martial arts gem Chocolate.

The restoration slate is stacked. Bride of Re-Animator gets the 4K glow-up it deserves. Bleeding Skull presents Folies Meurtrières, a dreamlike French slasher. Hide and Go Shriek, Before the Fall, and Alex Winter’s cult freak-out Freaked all return sharper than ever. The crown jewel for animation lovers might be the U.S. premiere of the 4K restoration of Angel’s Egg, Mamoru Oshii’s haunting masterpiece.

The Big Events

The films might be the main draw, but Fantastic Fest’s events have a way of stealing the show. Castle Rat is bringing medieval heavy metal chaos to the opening night party. Mick Garris, Don Coscarelli, and Ernest Dickerson will mark the 20th anniversary of Masters of Horror with an on-stage conversation. The Transgender Film Center gets a fundraiser complete with exclusive Super Yaki merch.

Other diversions include the Ghoulish Book Fair, a medieval drag show hosted by Louisianna Purchase, Doug Benson’s Movie Interruption, the ever-rowdy Fantastic Feud, and the Festival’s notorious Closing Night Party, whose location is always a guarded secret until the last possible moment.

Global Genre

Part of Fantastic Fest’s magic is in how easily it hops borders. This year’s lineup includes the North American premiere of Radu Jude’s three-hour Dracula, which reportedly includes more full-frontal than an HBO pilot. From New Zealand, Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon promises satanic metal mayhem. Spain’s Decorado adapts Alberto Vázquez’s twisted short into a feature-length animation. Norway’s Dawning sets horror against an isolated Nordic backdrop.

Asian cinema is represented with The Forbidden City from Italy and China, Road to Vendetta from Hong Kong and Japan, and Thailand’s A Useful Ghost, which blends supernatural fantasy with dark romantic comedy.

A Jury of Fearless Tastemakers

Awards will be handed out in Main Competition, Horror, Next Wave, and Shorts by a jury that could double as a comic-con panel of your dreams. Patton Oswalt, Fred Durst, author Ottessa Moshfegh, and filmmakers like Aaron Schimberg and Mercedes Bryce Morgan will weigh in, along with industry insiders from Lionsgate, Sundance, Sitges, and more.

A Full Plate for the 20th Birthday

Seventy-eight features, dozens of shorts, forty-five world premieres, international guests, live events, and parties that should come with a waiver. That is how Fantastic Fest turns twenty. It is both a greatest-hits tour and a future-facing leap, keeping the weird heart of the festival beating while making sure there is always something new to discover.

If you have never been, imagine a week where you can watch a Finnish revenge epic in the morning, a French animated fever dream in the afternoon, a haunted heist comedy at night, and then close out with a metal band dressed like knights. If you have been, you already know the drill. Get your badge, pace yourself, and maybe avoid any ancient whistles.

Fantastic Fest 2025 runs September 18–25 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, Texas. Grab your tickets while you can!

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