Fantasia Film Festival 2025 – what to catch at Montreal’s celebrated genre showcase

Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival returns this July for its 29th edition, promising almost three feverish weeks of genre-defying cinema, world premieres, and the kind of midnight madness that has made it a pilgrimage site for cult cinephiles and industry scouts alike. From July 16 to August 3, 2025, Fantasia transforms the city into a ground zero of modern horror shenanigans, projecting everything from boundary-pushing terror and high-octane action to heart-wrenching anime and visionary sci-fi.

The festival will open with American neo-Western black comedy film Eddington, by Ari Aster, while the Canadian Trailblazer Award will be presented to Hungarian-born Canadian filmmaker George Mihalka, the director of the 1981 slasher film My Bloody Valentine, and to the Canadian actress and singer Sheila McCarthy.

So what are we most excited for? Well, how about…

Two we’ve already seen and can wholeheartedly recommend:

• The Virgin of the Quarry Lake – Laura Casabé merges two tales of dread by Argentinian horror author Mariana Enriquez (Things We Lost In the Fire) in this coming-of-rage chiller.
• Redux Redux – Multiverse-hopping, serial-killer hunting antics from director siblings the McManus Brothers. Very watchable sci-fi fun, laced with real insights into how we handle grief and trauma – yet it manages the tonal switches perfectly.

Nine we’re very fired-up to get into our eyes:

• Together– Michael Shanks presents everyone’s favourite cheese (Alison Brie) and favourite Franco (Dave) in this tale of a couple who seem to be drifting apart – until they’re fusing together. A dark body-horror anti-romcom that’s been getting midnight audiences hooting and hollering.
• Lurker – In Alex Russell’s freaky thriller a shop clerk gets more than he bargained for when he inveigles his way into the social circle of a new pop star, only to find fame and fortune giving way to life or death.
• Fucktoys – Anipurna Sriram’s 16mm trash odyssey through female desire, shame, dreams and bodily fluids follows two friends attempting to amass the $10,000 they need to break an evil curse.
• It Ends – Four friends are trapped on endless highway, tormented by the wailing of the damned. So far, so Dead End, but we hear this watchable tale from first-time director Alexander Ullom has its own box of tricks stashed in the glove compartment.
• Reflections In A Dead Diamond – More of their usual sort of thing form directors Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet, this time throwing Diabolik, Bond, and that whole 60s espionage schtick into their pop-art blender.
• Mother of Flies – The Adams family return with another witchy tale (my favourite of theirs is still Hellbender) about a young woman seeking help fighting off an illness – but of course as every student of magic knows, for every give there’s a take.
• Influencers – Kurtis David Harder’s sequel to his breakout vacation psycho-thriller Influencer. Has he done the James Cameron trick of drawing a $ on the end and getting a bigger budget shovelled his way? We hope so – and we’re very excited to see the return of Cassandra Naud as the sinister killer CW – a Talented Miss Ripley for the Instagram generation.
• The Book of Sijjin and Illiyyin – Hadrah Daeng Ratu tells the story of an orphaned girl who learns a secret from her dying stepmother, performs a forbidden ritual, and unleashes hell. Stop, stop, you had me at ‘Indonesian gorefest’!

And three rep screenings of restored classics that are close to our hearts:

• Angel’s Egg – Maybe the greatest anime ever made that isn’t called Akira, Oshii’s 1985 masterpiece is a phantasmagorical voyage through a ruined world, a post-human dreamscape at the edge of rationality. Utterly sublime.
• Bullet In The Head – The third of John Woo’s four truly great Hong Kong action flicks (A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, this, and Hard Boiled). Each of them is a marvel, and the subject of which is best a suitable discussion for the lobby afterwards. All of these are better than his American films, and that’s not gatekeeping, that’s just facts.
• Noroi: The Curse – A documentary filmmaker investigates paranormal reports and that old time folk religion in this, one of the best (some would say the great) Japanese found footage horrors – back and looking better than ever. Directed by Koji Shiraishi.

Added together than makes a lucky 13 – a perfect number to provide summer chills. Have fun, screamers!