The living heart of cult horror in London beats louder than ever as Soho Horror Film Festival returns this November with a slate that’s fierce, funny, and defiantly its own.
The 2025 edition runs across two weekends: in person from 21 to 23 November at the Coldharbour Blue Cinema in Brixton, and online for the “Sohome” strand from 27 to 30 November. Over the past few years, Soho has grown into the capital’s essential home for boundary-pushing genre cinema, a festival that refuses to sell out or rest on its laurels. It remains what others pretend to be, a haven for films that risk something.
The curtain-raiser this year is a coup. Queens of the Dead, the zombie drag-queen spectacular from Tina Romero, daughter of George A., gets its London Premiere as a special preview night. It is exactly the kind of bold, high-energy opener that sets Soho apart: camp, political, and splattered in sequins and viscera.
The in-person weekend officially opens with the UK Premiere of Luc Besson’s Dracula: A Love Tale, starring Christoph Waltz and Caleb Landry Jones, with a score by Danny Elfman. Other centrepieces include We Bury the Dead (featuring Daisy Ridley) and Silencio (from Pieles director Eduardo Casanova). Grace Glowicki’s grave-robbing gross-out Dead Lover closes the Brixton run with wild, unchained energy.
Among the titles premiering across the two weekends are Hunting Matthew Nichols, Crossword, Theater Is Dead, Hot Spring Shark Attack, and Kenneled. We have already seen both Touch Me and Theater Is Dead and liked them a lot. The latter, which we reviewed in full here: https://whitlockandpope.com/2025/09/15/theater-is-dead-film-review-katherine-dudas/, turns meta-horror into a grinning act of self-exorcism. Touch Me remains one of the most tactile, tense American indies of the year.
Other draws include Shane Brady’s revenge comedy Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage Fueled Karma, Cassie Keet’s Abigail Before Beatrice, Patricio Valladares’ Lovecraftian What the Tide Dragged In, and Emily Bennett’s faith-and-flesh fever Blood Shine. There is a rich stretch of docs and midnight provocations too: Making Megaforce, Jump Scare, Human, and Sugar Rot, each promising its own strain of chaos.
Over fifty short films will screen across the two weekends, including new works tied to Benson and Moorhead (Something in the Dirt, The Endless), Jackson Stewart (Beyond the Gates), and Andrew Bowser (Onyx the Fortuitous), featuring appearances from Lena Headey, Doug Jones, and one very talented tarantula.
Tickets and passes are now available at http://www.sohohorrorfest.com.
Soho Horror Film Festival 2025 runs 21 to 23 November (in person) and 27 to 30 November (online).
Whitlock&Pope 