Skip to main content

Abertoir · 2025

Abertoir 2025

Features

Programme

16 films · 10 reviews

Jump to a film

Bokshi

Anahita, traumatised by the brutal disappearance of her mother, finds comfort in Shalini, her history teacher. On an unconventional school excursion to a mysterious prehistoric site, she confronts her terrifying destiny.

(Country: India; Year: 2025; Director: Bhargav Saikia; Writer: Harsh Vaibhav; Stars: Prasanna Bisht, Mansi Multani, Shernaz Patel, Rohit Tiwari, Sandeep Shridhar Dhabale, Kaushik Bharadwaj, Swaroopa Ghosh)

Bride Of Frankenstein

Review preview for Bride Of Frankenstein

Although there are grand themes at work here, the real power of the piece – as often in the Gothic, comes from the ways in which they clash, rather than from something built out of their unity.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
Doctor Frankenstein's creation persuades him to make him a mate.

(Country: US; Year: 1935; Director: James Whale; Writer: William Hurlbut and John L Balderston, based on the book by Mary Shelley; Stars: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester)

Full review

The Crazies

Review preview for The Crazies

The simplicity of the location, with its gentle green hills and thin woodland, makes it feel as if it could be anywhere, yet Romero positions his camera so as to generate maximum tension from it.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
The military attempts to contain a manmade combat virus that causes death and permanent insanity in those infected, as it overtakes a small Pennsylvania town.

(Country: US; Year: 1973; Director: George A Romero; Writer: Paul McCollough, George A Romero; Stars: Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, Harold Wayne Jones, Lloyd Hollar, Lynn Lowry, Richard Liberty, Richard France, Harry Spillman, Will Disney, Edith Bell, Bill Thunhurst)

Full review

Eyes Without A Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage)

Review preview for Eyes Without A Face

Franju is carefully slicing along the line where the concrete rigours of modern science intersect with the abstractions of youth, beauty and ephemerality.

Anton Bitel · 4 out of 5
A surgeon abducts girls - attempting to transplant their faces on to that of his disfigured daughter.

(Country: Italy; Year: 1960; Director: Georges Franju; Writer: Gascar, Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac, Claude Sautet, Jean Redon, based on the novel by Jean Redon; Stars: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob, François Guérin, Alexandre Rignault, Béatrice Altariba, Charles Blavette, Claude Brasseur, Michel Etcheverry, Yvette Etiévant, René Génin, Lucien Hubert, Marcel Pérès)

Full review

The Ghost (Lo Spettro)

A woman and her lover murder her doctor husband, but when strange things start happening, they wonder if they really killed him, or if he has come back from the dead to haunt them.

(Country: Italy; Year: 1963; Director: Riccardo Freda; Writer: Oreste Biancoli, Riccardo Freda; Stars: Barbara Steele, Peter Baldwin, Elio Jotta, Harriet Medin, Carol Bennet, Carlo Kechler, Umberto Raho)

The Invisible Half

Elena, a 'half' Japanese girl, struggles with her identity. While constantly watched, she discovers she's also being watched by something else - a monster that can only be seen through her smartphone and heard through her earphones.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2025; Director: Masaki Nishiyama; Writer: Masaki Nishiyama; Stars: Lisa Siera, Miyu Okuno, Runa Hirasawa)

The Keep

Nazis are forced to turn to a Jewish historian for help in battling the ancient demon they have inadvertently freed from its prison.

(Country: UK; Year: 1983; Director: Michael Mann; Writer: F Paul Wilson, Michael Mann; Stars: Scott Glenn, Ian McKellen, Alberta Watson, Jürgen Prochnow, Robert Prosky, Gabriel Byrne, William Morgan Sheppard)

Mag Mag

"If you see her, it's too late. If she falls in love with you, the only escape is death." After her beloved is killed by the Mag Mag ghost, Sanae vows revenge, but soon discovers the true identity of the person to whom she truly owes her retribution.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2025; Director: Yuriyan Retriever; Stars: Sara Minami, Takumi Saioto, Aoi Yamada)

Marama

Review preview for Marama

One of the most impressive films of the year to date.

Jennie Kermode · 5 out of 5
A young Māori woman travels to Victorian England after receiving a letter promising information about her birth parents. As she peels back the layers of colonial deceit, she is driven to avenge her shattered ancestry.

(Country: New Zealand/Aotearoa; Year: 2025; Director: Taratoa Stappard; Writer: Taratoa Stappard; Stars: Ariana Osborne, Toby Stephens, Umi Myers, Evelyn Towersey, Errol Shand)

Full review See: Interview with Taratoa Stappard about Marama, part 2 , Interview with Taratoa Stappard about Marama

Noise (Noijeu)

Review preview for Noise

The way the sound designer creates a landscape of silence is particularly impressive.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
After the disappearance of her younger sister, a woman with a hearing impediment experiences bizarre happenings and frightening encounters when mysterious noises echo throughout the building.

(Country: South Korea; Year: 2025; Director: Kim Soo-jin; Writer: Lee Je-hui; Stars: Lee Sun-bin, Han Soo-a, Kim Min-Seok, Ryu Kung-soo, Jeon Ik-ryeong)

Full review See: Interview with Kim Soo-jin about Noise

The Old Dark House

Review preview for The Old Dark House

Although Whale is working with clichés, many of them were only established in literary form in 1932, and are presented on film here for the first time in forms that continue to be imitated to this day.

Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
A couple run into trouble after they are stranded by a storm.

(Country: US; Year: 1932; Director: James Whale; Writer: Benn W Levy, RC Sherriff, based on the play by JB Priestly; Stars: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Lilian Bond, Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart, Elspeth Dudgeon, Brember Wills)

Full review

Phenomena (Creepers)

Review preview for Phenomena

This rarely seen Argento gem has it all. We're on ground he's covered before, but it's constantly shifting beneath us.

Jennie Kermode · 3 out of 5
A girl who has a strange relationship with insects attends boarding school in a small town where a killer is at large.

(Country: Italy; Year: 1985; Director: Dario Argento; Writer: Dario Argento; Stars: Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence, Daria Nicolodi, Dalila Di Lazzaro, Patrick Bauchau, Tanga) , Trailer

Full review

Queens Of The Dead

Review preview for Queens Of The Dead

Tina Romero is in her element.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
On what should be a fun night at a Brooklyn warehouse party, an outbreak of flesh-eating zombies forces a ragtag group of drag queens, partygoers and party-throwers to band together and somehow survive the night.

(Country: US; Year: 2025; Director: Tina Romero; Writer: Erin Judge, Tina Romero; Stars: Katy O'Brian, Riki Lindhome, Margaret Cho, Jack Haven, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Cheyenne Jackson, Tom Savini, Eve Lindley, Danielle Vasinova, Dominique Jackson, Quincy Dunn-Baker, Kimball Farley, Becca Blackwell, Quentin Nguyen-Duy, Jaquel Spivey)

Full review See: Interview with Tina Romero about Queens Of The Dead

Reflection In A Dead Diamond (Reflet Dans Un Diamant Mort)

Review preview for Reflection In A Dead Diamond

For something so lovely, it is hard-edged, and it sparkles with visual wit.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
When the mysterious woman in the room next door disappears, a debonair 70-year-old ex-spy living in a luxury hotel on the Côte d’Azur is confronted by the demons and darlings of a lurid past in which moviemaking, memories and madness collide.

(Country: Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France; Year: 2025; Director: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani; Stars: Maria de Medeiros, Koen De Bouw, Fabio Testi, Yannick Renier, Barbara Hellemans, Thi Mai Nguyen, Céline Camara, Kezia Quintal)

Full review See: Interview with Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani about Reflection In A Dead Diamond

Theatre Of Blood (Theater Of Blood)

A Shakespearean actor takes poetic revenge on the critics who denied him recognition.

(Country: UK; Year: 1973; Director: Douglas Hickox; Writer: Anthony Greville-Bell, Stanley Mann, John Kohn; Stars: Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins)

Touch Me

Review preview for Touch Me

It’s the situation that delivers the strangeness – and charm – mediated by Dudley’s performance as a woman who is self-deprecating and messy but lively enough to root for.

Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
Two codependent best friends become addicted to the heroin-like touch of an alien narcissist who may or may not be trying to take over the world.

(Country: US; Year: 2025; Director: Addison Heimann; Writer: Addison Heimann; Stars: Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jordan Gavaris, Marlene Forte, Paget Brewster)

Full review