Calling all fans of freaky flicks, skin-crawling cinema, and things to go bump in the dark. The UK’s largest horror film festival is coming to London – and it boasts an ENORMOUS catalogue of terrifying movies. You won’t want to miss it!
FrightFest first landed in our capital back in 2000 with its inaugural festival and has since grown bigger and bigger each year. This year’s Pigeon Shrine FrightFest will run from August 22-26 and will showcase sixty-nine features from all around the world. These will range from world premieres of highly-anticipated films to award-winning Cannes selections.
For its 25th iteration (!) the festival is moving to a brand new venue. The FrightFest horror film festival will take place at the ODEON Luxe on Leicester Square. The festival will take over all seven of the venue’s screens, including the two ODEON Luxe West End screens.
Said Bill Brock, Event manager at ODEON Cinemas Group:
“We’re thrilled to be hosting FrightFest at the iconic ODEON Luxe Leicester Square for its 25th-anniversary event. We share FrightFest’s passion for this genre and are honoured to be hosting the event. As our most famous cinema location and the home of UK premieres, we can’t wait for guests to brave and enjoy five days of fantasy and horror stories in our luxurious OLLS screens.”
What to see at FrightFest
Taking over Leicester Square’s ODEON Luxe cinema, FrightFest 2024 will showcase “sixty-nine features from across the world, including twenty-five main screen premieres and forty-five Discovery Screen titles”. They come from 11 countries, with screenings representing work from four continents around the world.
Among them, 28 films are having their world premiere at the festival. This means attendees will be among the very first in the world to see the films.
Broken Bird will open the festival with its world premiere, which is a full-length adaptation of an original story by Tracey Sheals. It’s the directorial debut from actress/filmmaker Joanne Mitchell, who previously adapted the story into the award-winning short Sybil. The film follows “a mortician… whose dark desires are becoming more insatiable and progressively out of control”.
The festival will close out with the English premiere of The Substance. The Cannes 2024 award-winning film stars Demi Moore as a fading celebrity who uses a dangerous substance to create a younger, better version of herself.
The horror film festival will also feature a short-film showcase as well as panels and discussions. The festival organisers are also planning special events to mark the festival’s 25th edition.
Said FrightFest Co-director Alan Jones:
“FrightFest, the Dark Heart of Cinema, has been beating loud and proud now for an amazing 25 years. An incredible quarter of a century that has seen major challenges and transformations to the global film industry that FrightFest has embodied, embraced and emblazoned. Our past 25 glorious years have shown FrightFest in a state of continuous evolution, something we are determined will never, ever stop. So let the 25th Anniversary FrightFest begin”.
Attending the horror film festival
There are a variety of tickets available for the horror film festival. Keen horror fans can buy full festival and day passes now. But if you only want to see a selection of screenings, single film tickets will be available from noon on July 20.
Day Passes vary in price, with Thursday’s Day Pass costing £39, Friday’s and Saturday’s costing £69, and Sunday’s and Monday’s priced at £59. You can buy single tickets for individual films at £14.99. Full festival tickets cost between £225-£250 per person.
Now it goes without saying that the festival will feature some pretty intense and potentially upsetting content. The festival has an overall 18 rating, across its various films. Films could contain anything from violence and gore to monstrous menace, sexual imagery, death, abusive behaviour, bullying, drug use, strobe lighting, and more. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
Find out more about Pigeon Shrine FrightFest, see the full event listing, and grab your tickets here.