Raindance 2025 Horror Strand Delivers Nightmares from the Edge

The 33rd Raindance Film Festival will open the crypt once more for its annual Horror Strand, running 19–22 June 2025 at London’s Vue Piccadilly. This year’s horror selection digs deeper into the subconscious and stretches the genre in unexpected directions, showcasing a fever dream of films that blend folklore, future-tech, eroticism and existential dread.

Curated to confront, disturb and confound, Raindance Horror 2025 launches with Deformelody: An American Nightmare, an off-kilter slasher satire shot entirely on a mobile phone over three years. From there, the madness expands: Dirty Boy, starring Graham McTavish, explores a cult member’s descent into paranoia and murder. Paul Raschid’s The Run invites the audience to choose the fate of a woman on a morning jog turned deadly, with horror legends Dario Argento and Franco Nero making appearances. Meanwhile, Zhaza, from Kazakhstan, delivers a feral, rage-fuelled take on familial betrayal and vigilante justice.

On Saturday, things turn folkloric and feral. In Srishti, a photographer travels into Himalayan isolation, only to be undone by ancient horrors and buried guilt. At the same venue, Hole mixes erotic tension with raw survival as a body buried in the woods comes back for revenge. Sunday offers myth and mayhem in Dui Shaw, the Bangladeshi sequel to last year’s award-winning Pett Kata Shaw, merging supernatural folklore with surrealist visuals and themes of generational trauma.

The first two days of Raindance Horror are being presented in partnership with The Independent Horror Society. Hosting duties fall to IHS founder Chris Nials, who described the collaboration as a celebration of “incredible genre films” and a shared commitment to championing grassroots horror. With more than 2,000 members, IHS has become a focal point for the UK’s underground horror community and will be front and centre as the blood flows at this year’s festival.

Beyond individual titles, the strand as a whole offers a stylistic departure from traditional horror programming. Raindance has always prioritised the weird, the rough-edged and the unclassifiable. This year is no different. Audiences can expect hypnotic storytelling from The Last Grail Hunter, where simulation theory and religious paranoia collide, and the caustic provocation of White Guilt, which reimagines plantation horror through a brutal lens of satirical inversion.

Other horror highlights from this year’s programme include Thinestra, a visceral body horror set during a sweltering Los Angeles Christmas, in which a woman’s use of a mysterious weight-loss drug leads to the emergence of a violent doppelgänger. Our Happy Place follows a woman trapped in a recurring cycle of death and resurrection deep in the woods, where buried memories and supernatural visions begin to converge. In Loner, a found-footage folk horror, a would-be influencer’s nature retreat spirals into something far more sinister when he encounters a malevolent presence guarding the forest. And in the darkly comic Snatchers, a black-market organ sale is upended when the supposed corpse abruptly returns to life. Each title is screening as part of the Horror Features Pass and will premiere with in-person Q&As featuring their respective creative teams.

Raindance’s horror commitment extends well beyond the cinema. Festivalgoers can pick up a Horror Strand pass for access to every feature across the weekend, and organisers are promising post-screening discussions, surprise appearances and an immersive atmosphere that invites guests to fully lose themselves in the chaos.

Running concurrently with a record 70 feature films and 113 shorts across the wider festival, Raindance 2025 looks set to be its most ambitious edition to date. The Horror Strand, in particular, stands out as a gauntlet thrown down in defiance of the expected, the tasteful and the safe.

Passes and tickets are available now via the official Raindance website. Use code RDFF25 for 15% off – valid once per customer!
For more information, visit: raindance.org/festival/ and raindance.eventive.org/passes/buy