Grimmfest, Manchester's International Festival of Fantastic Film, soon returns for its 2026 edition bringing four fear-filled days of independent genre cinema to The Odeon Great Northern this October 8 – 11, with today bringing a stacked line-up reveal of UK Premieres, Regional Premieres, rep screenings and more. Let's dive in.
This year's festival kicks off with a special screening of John Carpenter’s classic The Fog, with this year’s Grimmfest Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Adrienne Barbeau in attendance to accept the award and take part in a special Q&A.
Following this, Grimmfest takes it back in time with a selection of period horror including Casey Walker’s 1800s-set frontier horror Ithaqua which marks the return of legendary British studio Hammer. French director Quarxx (Pandemoniu) returns for the UK Premiere of alternate reality morality tale The Ones Who Grieve, which Grimmfest describes as “The Walking Dead reimagined by Ingmar Bergman.”
Other UK premieres include Minos Papas' Cypriot folk horror Motherwitch, as well as Taratoa Stappard’s Māori Gothic horror Mārama.
This year's Grimmfest also features another strong slate of intercontinental horror with a new Spanish-language strand, presented in association with the Cervantes Institute, that includes Victor Català's atmospheric 1970s Galician horror They Always Come at Night, Cristian Bernard’s grimm fairy tale Under Your Feet, the UK premiere of Christopher Cartagena’s violent home invasion thriller Disforia, Ángel Gómez Hernández's LA-set spider horror Crawlers starring Matilda Lutz (Revenge), and the Regional UK Premiere of The Whisper from Gustavo Hernández (The Silent House).
Also receiving their UK Premieres, two very different films from Jacob Santana, both featuring Belén Rueda (The Orphanage). Evil Dress is described as an elegantly retro-styled mix of old school haunted house horror and perspective shifting possession drama, while Reversion is a tricksy, slippery, paranoid psychological thriller, also starring Jaime Lorente (Money Heist).
Other highlights in this year's Grimmfest lineup include Kurt Martin’s “Stephen King meets David Lynch” thriller The Room Below starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers (The Tudors) and maggot mommy herself Alyssa Sutherland (Evil Dead Rise), Lucky Cerruti's bloody and brutal Boxcutter, Damien Fannon's AI-critical body horror Ivan, and Dave Boyle's J-horror inspired Never After Dark.
There's also the UK Premiere of Graham Guit's crime comedy Stronger Than the Devil, the Adams Family's The Glorious Dead, Steve Pink's comic crime conundrum Terrestrial, Jason Lei Howden’s long-awaited sequel Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon, Tyler Savage's Lovecraftian horror Oddities, gig economy anthology Grind, and influencer satire Sicko from Kazakh director Aitor Zholdaskali.
Stay tuned for more from Grimmfest, including further feature and shorts announcements, and for more information and to grab your passes, head over to Grimmfest's official site right here.
