Fantasia 2025: Preview
July 10th, 2025 / Kevin Ward
Welcome to my Fantasia 2025 preview—a look ahead at some of the wildest, weirdest, and most anticipated titles hitting this year’s festival. Fantasia remains one of my favorite places to discover bold, genre-defying work, and this year’s lineup is stacked.
A few titles I’ve already had the chance to catch earlier this year—Redux Redux, Together, Good Boy, and LifeHack—are all well worth checking out. You can read our previous coverage of those films for more.
But for now, let’s dig into the ones I haven’t seen yet—and can’t wait to. From zombie drag queens to demonic brawlers and anime time loops, here are the Fantasia 2025 premieres I’m most excited about. Be sure to check out the Full Festival Program, too. There’s plenty more worth discovering beyond the ones we’ve highlighted here.
Queens of the Dead
Producer: Natalie Metzger, Matthew Lee Miller
Writer: Erin Judge, Tina Romero
Cast: Margaret Cho, Jack Haven, Dominique Jackson, Tomas Matos, Katy O'Brian, Jaquel Spivey, Nina West
First off, Katy O’Brian—so good in Love Lies Bleeding—is back in the spotlight, this time as Dre, a drag showrunner whose night spirals from diva drama to full-on undead siege. Set in Bushwick during a raucous Easter warehouse show, it’s equal parts glitter, gore, and grief as a chosen family of performers must fend off a zombie outbreak while navigating betrayal, breakups, and sequined chaos. Throw in Mean Girls’ Jaquel Spivey as a drag queen ex with bad timing and Riki Lindhome dodging zombies across town, and you’ve got a resurrection party worth dying for. Oh, and did I mention it's directed by Tina Romero, daughter of zombie godfather George A. Romero? Yeah. You know this one’s gonna eat.
All You Need is Kill
Director: Kenichiro Akimoto
Producer: Masataka Aoki, Noriko Dohi, Eiko Tanaka
Writer: Yuichiro Kido
Cast: Natsuki Hanae, Ai Mikami
I’ve been helplessly hoping for a sequel to Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow for years—but in the perpetual absence of that, I got extremely perked up when I saw All You Need is Kill on Fantasia’s lineup. Based on the Japanese sci-fi novel that inspired the Cruise/Blunt cult hit (and a manga adaptation to boot), this long-awaited anime feature finally brings Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s brutal time-loop saga to the screen in its purest form. Stoic loner Rita is caught in a hellish cycle of alien attacks and sudden death, forced to relive the same morning over and over as Earth’s future hangs in the balance. You’ve got sci-fi tech, grotesque alien behemoths, and existential repetition—always my bag. Directed by Kenichiro Akimoto, this looks like the stylish, brainy, blood-soaked genre reset I’ve been craving. Suit up. Die. Repeat. Watch.
Flush
Director: Grégory Morin
Producer: Jean-Michel Tari
Writer: David Neiss
Cast: Remy Adriaens, Elliot Jenicot, Jonathan Lambert, Elodie Navarre
Only at Fantasia could a film about a man stuck in a bathroom stall with a heap of stolen cocaine sound like one of the most anticipated cinematic meltdowns of the year. In Flush, middle-aged party casualty Luc (Jonathan Lambert) finds himself quite literally wedged into a toilet after a failed attempt to win back his ex—and accidentally swiping a stash from the club’s dealer. If the premise delivers on its promise, it could be a spiraling, sweat-soaked descent. I’m picturing Crank meets Trainspotting, perhaps in a single-location panic room. Director Grégory Morin looks to be aiming for the grotesque, the hilarious, and the utterly unhinged—and I’m fully here for whatever kind of toilet-panic fever dream this turns out to be.
Holy Night: Demon Hunters
Director: Lim Dae-hee
Writer: Lim Dae-hee
Cast: David Lee, Don Lee, Seohyun, Gyeong Su-jin, Jung Ji-so
Look, when Don Lee (The Roundup, Train to Busan, Eternals) is cast as the leader of a demon-hunting exorcist squad, I’m not asking questions—I’m buying a ticket. Holy Night: Demon Hunters promises holy water and heavy punches in equal measure, with a wave of supernatural violence shaking the city and whispers of Satanic cults orchestrating possessions to build a demonic army. Luckily, the Holy Night crew is on deck: Don Lee’s Bow is the spiritual bouncer you do not want to mess with, while Seohyun performs the actual exorcisms, and David Lee documents the carnage. If this delivers even half the exorcism-meets-explosions chaos it’s teasing, it could be a crowd-pleasing, blood-splattered genre mashup with real punch—literally.
Noise
Director: Kim Soo-jin
Executive Producer: Suh Young-joo
Writer: Lee Je-hui, Kim Yong-hwan
Cast: Lee Sun-bin, Kim Min-seok, Ryu Kyung-soo
I love my horror slow-burning and nerve-shredding—the kind that traps you on the edge of your knife and keeps you there. Based on the premise alone, Noise sounds like exactly that. Lee Sun-bin stars as Joo-young, a woman with a hearing impairment who starts to pick up unsettling sounds in her supposedly quiet new apartment. When her younger sister suddenly disappears, those eerie noises begin to take on a sinister shape, and Joo-young finds herself haunted by something she can sense more than see. If this delivers the kind of drawn-out tension it promises, we could be in for a chilling descent where every creak, whisper, and silence is a threat. With its focus on sound and isolation, Noise has all the makings of a pressure-cooker supernatural thriller—and I’m ready to squirm.
Lurker
Director: Alex Russell
Producer: Galen Core, Archie Madekwe, Marc Marrie, Charlie McDowell…
Writer: Alex Russell
Cast: Archie Madekwe, Théodore Pellerin
Lurker looks like the kind of sharp, satirical thriller Fantasia programs best—a story of obsession, proximity to fame, and the warped validation of social media. Matthew (Théodore Pellerin) is a soft-spoken retail clerk whose world tilts when rising pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) walks into his shop. A shared music cue leads to a concert invite, and from there, Matthew slips deeper into Oliver’s rarefied world—his clout-heavy inner circle, his fame-adjacent lifestyle, and the fragile social ecosystem that sustains it all. But access comes with pressure, and Matthew’s sense of self twists into something darker as he scrambles to stay relevant.
The buzz out of Sundance was hot on this one, and I’ve been anticipating a chance to see it ever since. And honestly, after Madekwe’s recent runs in Gran Turismo and Saltburn, I’ve been eager to see what’s next.