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The 2025 edition of GASP! Horror Festival opened with magnificence. On its opening day, on a Friday night on the outskirts of Manchester City Centre at the fabulous Cultplex, the running order of film entailed Welcome to Praeris, a Short Film Showcase, and the finish with a bloody bang: the enthusiastically titled, Splatter Double Bill
Preceding Welcome to Praeris, we were treated to the atmospheric short: The Lies of our Confines. An exclusive Manchester screening, this Leon Oldstrong written-and-directed story sees an almost coming-of-age horror in the Scottish woodland. A diverse group of young, Black males are taken by two youth workers who are determined to give the lads an outdoor experience that, typically and systemically, would not be accessible for them. What initially seems like a dream getaway and unreal adventure, quickly transcends into a folk nightmare when a doll is taken from forbidden land… The Lies of Our Confines did an excellent job in executing its atmosphere with the backdrop of a wonderful woodland location.
Welcome to Praeris on the other hand, felt aggressively artsy and pretentious, but good, of course. A French dystopian sci-fi from writer-director Jérémy Ibraimovski, Welcome to Praeris is blitzed with tension, intrigue, and mystery. Only a handful of characters are present, most of whom have succumbed to whatever disasters the post-apocalypse holds. With mixing flashbacks with unease in intensity, Welcome to Praeris is a psychological nightmare for its viewer.
Prior to the showpiece double-bill of splatter films, the first block of shorts took place. What an incredible, diverse range of short filmmaking. Across 11 films, the Cultplex audience were treated to everything from fantastical body horror to teary-eyed grief. Short films made domestically and abroad, an excellent range of practical and digital effects were present, along with fascination over the quality and production value given the short run times.
A personal favourite was Rejected – a body horror from writer-director, Rene R Rivas. This short sees a parody of 90s American tech commercials, but in this instance, a killer digital camera that reaches to absurd levels in its execution of death. Ridiculously hilarious.
Late Friday evening, the first day of GASP! Horror Festival closed with a Splatter Double Bill consisting of Run For Your Life! and Girls Just Wanna Have Kill. The former, written and directed by Liam Banks, was in possession of vibes similar to that in The Evil Dead, with folk-ish horror elements. Very bloody and gruesome, but very fun. Excellent cinematography, too.
Then we have Girls Just Wanna Have Kill… Quite possibly one of the craziest and most absurd films ever made. Absolutely insane. The levels of black comedy are off the charts at times. A Japanese spectacle from writer-director Sean Kurosawa, this bonkers blast sees incoherent references made to Friday the 13th and time-travel itself. A jittery, almost hallucinogenic run of flashbacks and flashforwards, there are times when one questions what the f*ck they are watching, yet in parallel, there is an admiration of the bizarre beauty unfolding. How, just how, a murder in the past has relevance in the future, would not typically make sense, but in Girls Just Wanna Have Kill – yes, an on-screen nod to Cyndi Lauper occurs – logic eventually prevails…kind of.
Day one of GASP! 2025 set a precedent for the excellence that was to be expected throughout the weekend: a mix of indie horrors, splattered with energetic arrays of short films, and with classics hidden in between. The Cultplex audience was treated to a beautiful selection of films, everything from the bizarre to the bonkers. From body horror to surrealist horror, day one at GASP! had a bit of everything.
Dom.
For John.
This article’s featured image: By Source, GASP! Horror Festival, Fair Use https://www.gasphorrorfestival.co.uk/about
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