Sohome Horror Pride Serves Up Slayers, Slashers and Sapphic Sci-Fi

The Soho Horror Film Festival’s virtual sibling Sohome Horror Pride returns this weekend with a defiant and dazzling showcase of queer horror from around the globe. Running from 13 to 15 June, the 2025 edition marks the sixth outing of the award-winning LGBTQ+ genre event, and delivers a line-up of 10 feature films and 25 shorts – all available on a pay-what-you-can basis, making it one of the most accessible genre festivals of its kind.

The programme takes full advantage of the weekend’s Friday the 13th date, presenting a theme strand titled Queering the Slasher, a celebration and subversion of the tropes that have long shaped the horror genre. Among the headline titles is Black Theta, Tim Connolly’s self-aware homage to early-2000s slashers, making its European premiere. The festival also features the international debut of The Brooklyn Butcher, a sleazy, neon-lit portmanteau that Cinephobia Releasing described as “Abel Ferrara meets Paris, Je T’aime via the bear scene”.

Mary Beth McAndrews’ Bystanders turns the familiar ‘cabin in the woods’ formula inside out with a story of feminine rage and retribution, while The Premiere delivers a genre-bending mockumentary about one obsessive Scream fan’s misguided attempt to turn the Ghostface mythology into a Broadway musical. That film’s creator, Sam Pezzullo, also stars.

The Scream theme continues with a live commentary screening of Scream 3, hosted by Trace and Joe of the popular Horror Queers podcast, who will dissect the film’s legacy and, crucially, its maligned haircuts. Also on the bill is Jesse’s Revenge, a one-off retrospective event marking the 40th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2, long regarded as a landmark in queer horror cinema.

In addition to the slashers, the programme casts a wider net across the horror spectrum. Fiona Dourif leads Psychonaut, a UK premiere that blends sapphic science fiction with noir surrealism, while Sunset on the River Styx offers a lyrical entry into vampire cult cinema. David-Jan Bronsgeest’s Binary explores body horror through the lens of trans identity, and Egyptian director Marwan Mokbel contributes The Judgment, which confronts hereditary trauma with folkloric dread.

Closing the weekend is The Rebrand, a satirical slasher from Kaye Adelaide and Mariel Sharpe that targets influencer culture with gleeful malice and sharp commentary. Other highlights include Parker Brennon’s road trip anthology Hauntology and Michael Varrati’s There’s a Zombie Outside, a film-within-a-film experiment that probes the psychology of independent horror creators.

Festival director Mitch Harrod emphasised the political urgency behind this year’s selection. “Times may feel like the apocalypse with rights being revoked, sponsors jumping ship, books being banned and stories being erased,” they said. “But let the horror history books set the record straight: queer is here—always has and always will be.”

The festival continues its commitment to accessibility by remaining entirely online and running on a donation-based system, with proceeds supporting Not A Phase, a UK charity for trans, non-binary and gender-diverse adults. Most films will be available to international viewers, though some screenings will be restricted to UK audiences.

Full programming details and tickets can be found at www.sohohorrorfest.com, and the festival can be followed on Instagram and X at @SohoHorror.