Our Picks for Frightfest 2026

Forget “Summerween” – every long-time U.K. horror fan knows that FrightFest is the place to go if you’re looking for midsummer monsters and seasonal scares. This August, the beloved London-based genre film festival returns for its 26^th year running for five days and nights of cinematic terror, both unseen and unearthed, with its line-up boasting a formidable gallery of ghosts and ghouls. With so many exciting titles on offer, split over five separate screens with multiple films playing in parallel to one another, anybody who enters the hallowed halls of the ODEON cinemas in Leicester Square and the West End between the 27^th and 31^st of August will have to make a difficult decision as to which titles they wish to prioritise over others. Being a student based in the north of England, I haven’t had the privilege of attending an in-person FrightFest event yet, but I nonetheless know the struggle of picking and choosing between intriguing and exciting titles on a horror festival line-up.

Whilst I and the rest of the lovely folks here at The Geek Show cannot promise to solve all of your movie-going conundrums this summer festival season, I can offer you some assistance by highlighting 10 promising and peculiar pictures from this year’s FrightFest lineup that are sure to catch your eye and satisfy your curiosity – morbid or otherwise. Be warned, though, that your guide through this cabinet of curiosities has a taste for the odd, the offbeat, and the outlandish – so whilst I can ensure you will make it through this year’s FrightFest in one piece, I can’t guarantee you’ll leave with your sanity fully intact…

Colony (dir. Yeon Sang-ho) – Arguably the biggest and most highly-anticipated title on this year’s FrightFest lineup is the brand new action-horror romp from the Korean director behind the modern horror classic Train to Busan (2016) and its sequel Peninsula (2020). In Colony, Yeon takes his familiar sub-genre of the zombie movie and injects it with a dose of gnarly body horror, with the film focusing around an outbreak of a rapidly-evolving virus at a biotechnology conference gone horribly wrong. Having its UK Premiere at FrightFest as part of the Main Screen lineup on Thursday the 27^th, this highly-anticipated viral shocker has already received critical acclaim at its previous screenings, and it is already set to have a wider UK theatrical release later this year – making this the perfect chance to catch an upcoming horror hit before anybody else.

Faces of Death (dir. Daniel Goldhaber) – Whilst US audiences have already been treated to a theatrical run and Shudder home release of this highly-anticipated metafictional riff on the infamous 1978 video nasty of the same name, Faces of Death will make its English theatrical debut at FrightFest on Friday the 28^th as part of the Discovery Screen 1 lineup – and I’m incredibly excited to see the film make its way across the pond to the country which was driven into a state of moral panic by the controversial original almost 50 years ago. For those who are unaware, this reboot from the filmmakers behind Cam (2018) and How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022), follows a social-media moderator who stumbles across a series of snuff videos inspired by the death scenes in the notorious aforementioned cult classic, and soon finds herself way too deep into a rabbit hole of internet-based murder and mayhem to climb out. With a star-studded cast that features Barbie Ferreira (Euphoria), Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things), and popstar Charli xcx (yes, really!), I get the feeling that this one is going to blow a few minds, or at the very least bash them in with a hammer.

Snapshot (dir. Joseph Archer) – Sticking with the theme of killing on camera, this unique-sounding new found-footage horror traces back the histories of both to London in 1888, where the fantasy of the “moving image” has just become a reality, and a vicious serial-slayer known only as ‘Jack the Ripper’ prowls the foggy streets of Whitechapel in search of his latest victim. This feature directorial debut from filmmaker Joseph Archer follows an all-female ghost-hunting society through the lens of a Victorian pinhole camera – a group who seek to prove their theory that the unidentified murderer terrorising London’s red light district is not entirely human. From its concept alone, Snapshot sound like it’ll make for a downright delicious slice of gothic noir with an original approach to the found-footage format, and it sounds like the perfect film to close out the festival’s Discovery Screen 1 lineup on Monday the 31^st.

Grind (dirs. Ed Dougherty, Brea Grant, Chelsea Stardust) – It wouldn’t be a proper horror film festival without an anthology film, and this one has a brilliant thematic premise. Having its UK Premiere as part of the Main Screen strand on Saturday the 29^th, Grind vows to take a satirical hacksaw to the real-world nightmares of the gig economy through four tiny, timely tales of terror. Helmed by the filmmakers responsible for previous festival hits such as 12 Hour Shift (2020) and Satanic Panic (2019), the cast of Grind is full of familiar faces including horror icon Barbara Crampton, Dropout’s Ify Nwadiwe, and Dead Meat YouTube horror host James A. Janisse – a lineup which, for many a modern horror fan who spends a lot of time in online spaces, is bound to be a dream come true.

Our Effed Up World (dir. Alice Maio Mackay) – It’s a known fact by now that I’m an avid admirer of the work of Alice Maio Mackay, and find her deeply inspiring; at the age of 22, the Australian filmmaker has just completed her 7^th feature film, the latest in a series of refreshingly earnest and deeply queer horror pictures that combine valuable trans-centric storytelling with bloody, slimy genre fun. This time around, Mackay tackles alien invasion by way of Kevin Smith and Gregg Araki in Our Effed Up World, where a young woman dealing with the loss of her grandmother finds herself and her slacker friends to be the last line of defence against a ravenous force from outer space. Produced by none other than Jane Schoenbrun of I Saw the TV Glow (2024) fame, Our Effed Up World features appearances from not only that film’s co-lead Jack Haven, but also Annapurna Sriram (Fucktoys), Jess McLeod (Normal), Tommy Dorfman (13 Reasons Why), and Leela Varghese (Lesbian Space Princess), which is quite the impressive cast if I do say so myself. The film has its UK Premiere on Friday the 28^th as part of the Discovery Screen 2 strand, and I guarantee you that you won’t want to miss it – every new picture Alice puts out is an event worth celebrating.

The Glorious Dead (dirs. The Adams Family) – Unsurprisingly, I’m also incredibly excited for the latest from another of my modern horror favourites, the ever-immensely-talented Adams family. Having played FrightFest last year with the haunting and very effective folk healing frightener Mother of Flies (2025), Toby, John and co. have returned with a very different, very modern kind of American nightmare, but one with dark roots which go back centuries. For all the summer heat we’ve experienced in the UK of late, and the temperatures we are still yet to expect from the rest of the season, The Glorious Dead promises to be a cold, chilly tale, where hell literally freezes over in small-town America, and the corpses buried under its foundations don’t want to stay down. There’s nobody who’s digging the sinister out of Americana quite like the Adams family are right now, and I won’t be surprised if the International Premiere of The Glorious Dead on Sunday the 30^th as part of the Main Screen strand doesn’t end up being one of the highlights of the festival.

Frostbite (dir. Lukas Rinker) – I’m sticking with a snowy theme for my next pick, a claustrophobic single-location chiller from Germany in which a family find themselves trapped under ice in a downed cable-car following a “controlled” avalanche – and there’s something lurking outside which wants to get in as much as they want to get out. Rinker’s previous feature was the fabulous and utterly demented porta-potty survival comedy Holy Shit! (2022), which was one of the best and most memorable films to play on the festival circuit during its year of release; his latest, which has its UK Premiere on Friday the 28^th as part of the Main Screen strand, appears to be a noticeably more serious affair, but the nastier aspects of his feature debut were proof enough that he can construct thrills just as well as he can generate laughs. Here’s hoping this one proves to be another stone-cold banger.

The Abominable Snowman (dir. Val Guest) – The wintry vibes continue with the highlight of this year’s retrospective screenings at FrightFest, with Discovery Screen 3 playing host to the World Premiere of the new 4K restoration of an underrated Hammer horror classic on Saturday the 29^th (with an encore on Monday the 31^st). With a script adapted by the legendary Nigel Kneale from his now-lost 1955 BBC teleplay The Creature, Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman sees the iconic Peter Cushing play a botanist on an expedition through the Himalayas in search of the titular cryptozoological marvel. It’s a slower, quieter, more subtle picture from Hammer, and an intelligent and engaging example of one of the studio’s early forays into horror, fantasy, and science-fiction – and I’m confident that it will pair very nicely with the new Hammer horror offering, Ithaqua, which has its World Premiere on the Saturday as part of the Main Screen strand.

The Peril at Pincer Point (dirs. Noah Stratton-Twine, Jake Kuhn) – The classic Brit-horror vibes continue with this wacky UK feature which has already been positively compared to the likes of Lake Michigan Monster (2018) and Hundreds of Beavers (2022). The Peril at Pincer Point follows Jim Baitte, a sound recordist who becomes entangled in an island-bound maritime mystery that involves pirates, an ominous prophecy, and – presumably – a whole bunch of crabs. Having its English Premiere as part of the Discovery Screen 2 strand on Monday the 31^st, I can’t help but be delighted and intrigued by the concept for this film and its stylistic influences, as well as the poster which reminded me of the covers for Guy N. Smith’s paperback tales of crustacean-based carnage – and I get the feeling that this will very much be a film for those who get that reference.

Welcome to G-Town (dirs. Nathan and Ben McQuaid) – I did warn you that things were going to get weird. What better place is there for me to end my list on than with what might be the most bonkers feature film on this year’s FrightFest lineup, an ultra-Glaswegian riff on the early splatter films of Peter Jackson? Welcome to G-Town is ostensibly a film about aliens attempting to invade Scotland, but of course it isn’t that simple – this sounds like a very indie, very regional, and very, VERY fun piece of sci-fi B-horror. Having not yet been to Glasgow (though I very much intend to go in future), I get the feeling that a lot of the jokes would be lost on me, yet I also get the distinct vibe that the English Premiere screening of the film on Sunday the 30^th as part of the Discovery Screen 2 strand may well be the most joyous and unforgettable one of the bunch. Regional indie horror is a very special thing, and I will always be there to fight on its behalf if needed.

This is just a small selection of the curious, intriguing, and great-sounding titles on offer from this year’s FrightFest, so I’d advise you to do your own research – hell, at the time of writing, the shorts programmes haven’t even been announced yet, and those regularly turn out to be the highlight of many a festival! However, I do hope that you find these ten fright flicks to sound as tantalising to you as they do to me – and if you stick around, you’ll hear more about several of these (as well as some of the others I didn’t mention) as part of The Geek Show’s coverage of FrightFest 2026!

ROBYN’S ARCHIVE – FRIGHTFEST 2026