Manchester’s International Festival of Fantastic Film brings you fifteen feature films, two short film programmes and a fresh wave of genre nightmares – all from the comfort of your own home.
Think Grimmfest 2026 was over when the festival wrapped in October? Think again! Celebrating its 18th anniversary, Grimmfest has one more treat – or trick – in store for horror fans. Grimmfest 2026: Part 2 – The Online Edition brings a long weekend of movie premieres to your screens from 3–7 December, exclusively in the UK.
Every year, our programming team discovers far more astonishing, genre-shaking films than we can squeeze into the live festival. This December, we’re giving UK audiences another chance to catch some of those must-see discoveries, packed with fresh nightmares, twisted tales and boundary-pushing genre cinema.
The line-up boasts 1 World premiere, 4 International premieres, 5 UK premieres and 3 Northern UK premieres.
Federico Zampaglione (THE WELL) returns with THE NAMELESS BALLAD, a supernatural descent into the dark side of the music industry. Seeking inspiration, a troubled musician retreats to an isolated Italian villa, where an ancient curse unleashes sinister forces, dragging him into a nightmare of obsession and madness. Northern UK Premiere.
Lisa Belcher’s HOUSE OF ABRAHAM brings a formidable cast, including Natasha Henstridge, Lin Shaye and Lukas Hassel, to a sinister psychological thriller about a mysterious retreat promising desperate visitors a way out, but harbouring a far more terrifying secret. A northern UK premiere.
Mark Kuczewski and Natalie Pailing’s DEADCAST gets its World Premiere, following two best friends who take their supernatural podcast on the road to investigate Britain’s darkest legends. But as the line between myth and reality begins to blur, their friendship, and sanity, are put to the test.
Fresh from serving on the GRIMMFEST 2026 jury, Jennifer Trudrung (THE NEST) makes her feature directorial debut with THE VIRGINS. Two straight A high school girls escape for a secret weekend of freedom; unaware they’ve attracted the attention of two angry young men. What begins as youthful rebellion threatens to take a much darker turn. An International Premiere.
Lee Daehan’s DEBONE is a punishing South Korean crime thriller steeped in the tradition of classic revenge cinema. After killing his abusive father to protect his mother, a young man emerges from prison into a hostile world, driven towards the criminal underworld by poverty and desperation. A northern UK Premiere.
Alex Montilla’s FRIDAY THE 69TH delivers a gloriously self-aware slasher comedy about a group of adult filmmakers in 1981 attempting to cash in on the slasher craze; only for their low-budget knock-off to descend into bloody, absurd chaos. A love letter to the scrappy, sleazy spirit of eighties horror.
Shoshana Ehrenkranz’s JUICE CLEANSE receives its UK Premiere, turning a close-knit Jewish community’s wellness craze into something decidedly more sinister. When a young woman recovering from an eating disorder returns home, she finds the new rabbi promoting a mysterious diet drink with potentially disturbing consequences.
Dawson Doupé, Ryder Doupé and Todd Tapper bring a fresh twist to the home-invasion thriller with the UK Premiere of BLEED, in which a family already in crisis faces a night of terror when an estranged relative arrives on their doorstep after committing a horrific crime.
In Justice Hardy’s MANTIS, an experimental technology offers a way to communicate with the recently dead. But for a grieving widow who takes a job using the technology, the boundary between life, death and denial may prove dangerously thin. An International Premiere.
Jen Walden’s sci-fi thriller LUMI takes us into the snowy wastelands of a future ravaged by climate change and rogue AI. An International Premiere, it offers a chilling vision of a world where humanity’s attempts to control technology may have come at a terrible cost.
Travis Milloy’s neon-drenched L.A. set thriller, DRIVER ED puts a rideshare driver on a collision course with a mysterious passenger, a serial killer targeting drivers like him. A tense, urban game of cat and mouse, arriving as an International Premiere.
Martijn Smits’ ferociously brutal MEAT KILLS arrives for its Northern UK premiere. Eager to join a radical animal-rights group, young activist Mirthe helps raid a pig farm, only to discover the animals have already been slaughtered. When the mission turns into a bloody campaign of vengeance, idealism gives way to a savage fight for survival.
Fresh off the festival circuit, Mark G. Chapman’s FIRST CIRCLE sports an all-star cast including Michael Madsen in one of his last roles, in this dark, horror crime thriller, that reimagines limbo not as a place beneath us, but as a condition we already inhabit.
Manny Gumina’s CREATURE FEAR delivers a chilling new take on the serial-killer thriller, following a desperate man’s descent into madness as violence engulfs a small Wisconsin town. A dark, unsettling journey into human depravity, where the line between victim and monster begins to blur.
And Matthew Laughter and Jake Parker’s GOD COUNTRY blends queer horror with a dark exploration of faith, power and small-town secrets. When a man returns home to claim an inheritance, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of a dangerous religious leader, where belief becomes a weapon and the promise of salvation takes a sinister turn.
That’s not all. We’re also preparing two short-film programmes entitled HAUNTINGS and POSSESSIONS, packed with further discoveries and premiere screenings.
Titles include, MAREK (Dir; Vincent Casiro, France), FOLLICLES (Dir; Daniel J. Egbert, USA), THE VISITOR (Dr; Elliot Blanchard, USA), NOT JUST ME (Dir; Brendan Hennessy Australia), FANTASMAS (Dir; Dennis Routledge-Tizzard, Spain), TINY COFFIN (Dir; Albin Glasell, Sweden), WHEN SHE SINGS (Paul Holbrook, UK), HOME SWEET HOME (Dir; Emile Devetter, Nicola Florin, Belgium), BREATHWORK (Dir; Erik Westerström, Sweden), NIGHT WALK (Dir; Víctor Martín León, Spain), THE STRANGER AT THE DOOR (Dir; Kody J Bramhall, Australia) and NEWCOMER (Dir Sam Shapson, USA) and ADVERSE POSSESSION (Dir Norman Yi Li, Canada).
The LIVE festival may be over, but the nightmares are just getting started.
Reserve your tickets from Grimmfest 2026 Part 2 on their website.
