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Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s Fantastic Fest is celebrating its 20th edition by bringing you a treasure trove of highly anticipated cinematic wonders from around the world! Featuring 45 World Premieres, 15 International and North American Premieres, and 13 U.S. Premieres that are guaranteed to delight and surprise you, complemented by unforgettable events and magnificent special guests. Celebrate at the legendary Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX, from September 18th-25th, 2025. The full lineup is available now at FantasticFest.com.
Once again, I can’t make it to FF in person — but I’ll be covering the fest remotely this year! Stay tuned for lots of previews and reviews here on the Splatter blog and on @iloveplatter’s Instagram. Here’s a list of what is currently intriguing me:
MOTHER OF FLIES, Directed by Toby Poser, John Adams, & Zelda Adams
If it weren’t for the terminal cancer that’s crept back, Mickey would probably spend her summer break at the beach. Instead, she and her father, Jake, journey deep into the woods to meet a mystical healer named Solveig. When Jake asks how Mickey found this healer, she simply replies that it was Solveig who found her. Jake is skeptical. He finds Solveig’s ways strange and unsettling. But after exhausting every conventional treatment with little effect, Mickey is ready to try something different.
As they navigate Solveig’s treatment path through doubt, belief, trust, and healing, father and daughter come to realize that there’s more to the healer than meets the eye. Far older than she appears, Solveig is a mystic who needs Mickey’s help just as much as Mickey needs hers in order to right a decades-old injustice.
OF COURSE MY MOST ANTICIPATED FILM THIS YEAR IS THE LATEST FROM THE ADAMS FAMILY! Sorry for shouting, but OMG I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS. Cannot. Wait.
BLACK PHONE 2, Directed by Scott Derrickson
Four years ago, Finn killed his abductor and escaped, becoming the sole survivor of the Grabber. But true evil transcends death…As Gwen begins to receive calls in her dreams from the black phone and experience disturbing visions, her determination to solve the mystery will lead her and Finn to a snowed-in winter camp and a shattering discovery about the Grabber and their own family’s history.
OBVIOUSLY this is a highly anticipated sequel because the original is fucking fantastic! I can’t wait to check this out.
CAMP, Directed by Avalon Fast
“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.
You had me at “witches” and “decides to see what power they can find together.”
THE CRAMPS: A PERIOD PIECE, Directed by Brooke H. Cellars
Agnes Applewhite, a blossoming young woman caught between her sanctimonious mother and tightly wound sister, defies her family’s expectations by taking a job as a shampoo girl at a lively beauty salon. As she thrives in this new colorful world, she is suddenly confronted by debilitating menstrual cramps that become real-life monsters, blurring the line between reality and nightmare.
A psychedelic wonderland directed with the irreverence of John Waters, the film invites audiences into an absurd, achingly real world of self-love and empowerment by a bold new voice in genre filmmaking. THE CRAMPS: A PERIOD PIECE is a defiantly feminine coming-of-age nightmare exploring the horrors of being a woman.
SOLD! I’m very into this one.
MĀRAMA, Directed by Taratoa Stappard
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.
Gothic horror is MY JAM, and I want to see this so badly — even though I am 100% certain it will wreck me.
THE RESTORATION AT GRAYSON MANOR, Directed by Glenn McQuaid
Boyd Grayson is an Irish playboy who delights in bringing men home to his sprawling family estate for sex, just to spite his legacy-obsessed mother, reminding her she’ll never get the grandchildren she craves. When an accident leaves him incapacitated, Boyd finds himself handless, helpless, and at the mercy of her care.
Luckily for Boyd, his mother’s familial wealth has given him the opportunity to be the first person in the history of the world to pilot an experimental technology: mechanical hands controlled entirely by his subconscious. Soon, however, the hands begin to move on their own… even when they’re not attached to Boyd’s body.
ALICE KRIGE! And Murder hands! Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
DINNER TO DIE FOR, Directed by Diana Mills Smith
The fascination with real-life murder has become global, and audiences consume it across every medium imaginable. It’s against this cultural backdrop that Dianna Mills Smith makes her debut feature, DINNER TO DIE FOR—a sharp, single-location thriller that uncorks a new conversation: what happens when our collective appetite for true crime begins to seep into our own psyches?
The story follows Hannah, a culinary stylist; Evan, her obsessive would-be lover; and Blair, the effervescent girl-next-door. Evan indulges Hannah’s fixation on grisly true crime narratives, while Blair feeds her artistic impulses. Hannah keeps both dangling in a constantly shifting love triangle—so long as she remains in control. But when Evan escalates their role-playing to dangerous new levels, this dinner party goes violently off-menu.
HELLO! I loved Pascal Plante’s RED ROOMS, and this sounds like it’s gonna take that true crime obsession and push it even further off the rails.
FIND YOUR FRIENDS, Directed by Izabel Pakzad
A group of girlfriends decide to escape LA, heading out to Joshua Tree for a weekend full of DJ sets, drugs, and hookups. Dead set on enjoying themselves, the women settle into their Airbnb and get the party started right away, but an ominous visit from a redneck neighbor immediately sets the tone: they aren’t welcome here, and they need to watch how they behave.
This is billed as “Part hangout flick, part revenge thriller” — HELLS YES. I wonder how much I’ll love/hate the main characters in this one? Gotta find out!
SHELBY OAKS, Directed by Chris Stuckmann
A woman’s obsessive search for her missing sister leads her into a terrifying mystery at the hands of an unknown evil.
That’s truly the shortest synopsis I’ve ever SEEN – which probably makes sense for a film with a production wrapped in as much mystery and twists as the plot. The early buzz on this one has my attention, for sure!
SILENCIO, Directed by Eduardo Casanova
In the 1300s, four vampire sisters decide how to make up for their dwindling food supply as Europe is in the grip of the Black Plague. In 1989, a vampire falls in love with a human junkie who tests positive for HIV. And in 2030, a vampire/human couple reflect on the state of their world after a surprising medical breakthrough. Told through multiple generations of the same vampiric family, SILENCIO is a sexy gothic dive into a world of bloodsucking monsters who drink out of delicate teacups, take lorazepam, and ravenously anticipate their lover’s period.
Holy fuck. This sounds INCREDIBLE.
Other things I’m excited about; BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR (4K Restoration), Directed by Brian Yuzna 35 years after its original festival run, BRIDE OF REANIMATOR returns! This sequel is absolute INSANITY and I’m jealous I won’t be able to see it on the big screen! COYOTES, Directed by Colin Minihan, involving wildfires and packs of killer coyotes also looks great: DRACULA, Directed by Radu Jude, sounds fascinating: “Framed in the context of a filmmaker trying to make a Dracula film using AI, we wind up with nearly everything but that story.” OBSESSION, Directed by Curry Barker, sounds gnarly — I love a good tale of “wishes” gone awry. The latest V/H/S installment, V/H/S/HALLOWEEN, is sure to contain some gems, as well as all the SHORTS programs! I also adore that FF is showing the restored version of FREAKS, Directed by Tom Stern & Alex Winter — if you’ve never seen this, you HAVE TO. It’s wild.
I Love Splatter! 