The best of Grimmfest 2025

This October I went to Grimmfest, the North’s biggest genre film festival. Running 9th – 12th October at ODEON Great Northern, Grimmfest is the four-day horror and genre film festival. This year played host to twenty-two brand new feature films, many of which were world and international premieres, as well as an impressive roster of guests attending to support their films.

The films on display varied wildly, from World War 2 shark films through post-apocalyptic zombie westerns, all the way back to grounded Manchester-based thrillers. Here are the four films I saw that are particularly worth your attention.

Good Boy

The first screening of Grimmfest I attended was an advance screening of Good Boy, a particularly buzzy indie horror. The hook of the film is that it is a ghost story told from the perspective of a dog called Indy, who has been all over the film side of social media lately. The premise is very simple — a man and his dog move into a house that belonged to a dead relative, and strange things are afoot. 

On paper it is admittedly very standard, but the dog angle does a lot of work to elevate the film above a more standard haunted house affair. The camera always remains low, but at the level of Indy the dog rather than from his first-person POV, which intelligently masks what the audience can see. It is an effective way to simultaneously build tension and bring the audience closer to its surrogate character.

At only 73 minutes, there is little in the way of character arcs or narrative. This is a hindrance in the sense that it doesn’t allow for much going on outside of simply Indy being curious and spooked; but, in a way this is also a blessing as the dog POV doesn’t get tiring.

While nothing earth-shattering, what Good Boy gets right is the dog aspect, and at the end of the day, that’s all it really needs.

Credit: Good Boy @ Grimmfest

Incomplete Chairs

At 10:30am on the Saturday, Grimmfest screened Incomplete Chairs, the latest from rising cult filmmaker Kenichi Ugana. Put simply, the film follows a renowned chair-maker as he sets out to make a new chair that will be worth more than one million dollars. Of course, this being a primarily horror film festival, the film takes some bloody twists that are wild and absurd.

The film is not for the faint of heart — there is a great deal of massively over-the-top violence, with quite a lot of dismemberments afoot. Although, as someone who struggles with that level of violence often, it is undercut by quite how excessive it is, as well as how silly the context it occurs in is. Ugana successfully inserts a layer of black humour that stops the film from simply being an excessive violence fest.

The performances are very strong, especially the lead, Ryu Ichinose, who seems to be channeling Christian Bale’s iconic American Psycho performance, while somehow being both more cold and more deranged simultaneously. Given the inaccessibility of Ugana’s films, it is the type of thing you might only be able to see at a festival like Grimmfest, but if you do get the chance it is quite something.

Credit: Kenichi Ugana

Rabbit Trap

Rabbit Trap, the feature film debut of director Bryn Chainey, might well be my favourite film I saw at Grimmfest. The film follows an avant-garde musician and her husband, played by Rosy McEwen and Dev Patel, who have recently moved to a rural cottage in Wales. Darcy Davenport (Patel) travels out into the country to collect field recordings which Daphne (McEwen) uses in her music — but on one trip, he records something strange which brings with it the presence of a mysterious unnamed child. 

It goes without saying that Dev Patel is excellent, but he is frequently outmatched by McEwen and Jade Croot (who plays the child). Children in genre films are rarely great, but Croot is genuinely fantastic being both unsettling and deeply sympathetic.

The film is very slow and atmospheric, featuring only these three in its whole cast, leaving lots of room to be filled by the landscape it takes place in. Actually shot mainly in Yorkshire, the rural British countryside is shot with a lot of care and attention. It is obviously beautiful to look at, the space is given a lot of life, as well as being a slightly sinister force. It’s something I am always a bit of a sucker for, and Rabbit Trap does it very well.

Lucie Red, the film's production designer, was at the screening for a Q&A, which gave some great insight into some of Rabbit Trap's phenomenal art direction. The most impressive example of her work comes right at the end of the film, in scenes which completely transform the space we’ve been watching in a way I will not spoil. You will have to see for yourself.

Credit: Grimmfest

Kombucha

On the final day of Grimmfest, a cold Sunday afternoon, I saw Kombucha (dir. Jake Myers) — a horror comedy that is a satire of the corporate world through the lens of evil Kombucha. Its premise is completely silly and the film follows it through in a way you can’t help but respect.

For such a low-budget film, it is impressively shot. The office interiors, which take up a lot of the film's run time, are shot with really lovely soft backlighting so that it looks like something at least ten times the budget level. The performances also elevate the film greatly, especially lead Terrence Carey, a Chicago comic who delivers a fantastically fun turn in the film.

Balancing the horror with comic elements in a really skilful way, this was the perfect closer to my Grimmfest experience, leaving both me and the audience in a great mood. 

Credit: Jake Myers