Boston Underground Film Festival Announces Incredible Line-Up Of Genre-Shattering Films
The Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF) returns to the Brattle Theatre for its 25th annual celebration of all things weird, wicked, and wonderful, running from March 19 to March 23, 2025. This year’s program is a high-voltage mix of hallucinatory horror, transgressive comedy, and unclassifiable genre chaos featuring world premieres, festival darlings, deep-cut rediscoveries, and more than a few films that defy polite description.
BUFF kicks off with the East Coast Premiere of Lorcan Finnegan’s The Surfer, starring Nicolas Cage as a man who returns to his childhood beach only to find himself in a psychological death match with territorial locals. A sun-drenched descent into madness, Cage delivers a tour-de-force performance that will have audiences gripping their armrests and reconsidering any future surf trips.
BUFF is beyond honored to world premiere Alma & The Wolf, the latest from Michael Patrick Jann (Drop Dead Gorgeous), a slow-burn psychological thriller about a troubled cop (Ethan Embry) investigating a vicious wolf attack that quickly spirals into the uncanny, the unexplainable, and the deeply unsettling. Jann and actor Lukas Jann will be in attendance to discuss their eerie, Oregon-set mystery.
Whether you’re here for the world premieres, the genre-bending insanity, or the sheer joy of descending into the darkness with fellow weirdos, BUFF 2025 promises an unforgettable lineup of films, special guests, and late-night delirium.
Join us at The Brattle Theatre, March 19th–23rd, for another round of beautiful, deranged, and utterly unmissable madness as we celebrate our silver anniversary.
A limited number of festival badges are available now for purchase on the Brattle Theatre’s site.
Badge holders will be able to make screening selections starting Friday, March 7th, before tickets are released to the general public on Monday, March 10th. Tickets will be on sale at www.brattlefilm.org and www.bostonunderground.org
BOSTON UNDERGROUND 2025 FESTIVAL LINEUP
Opening Night Film
THE SURFER (dir. Lorcan Finnegan)
East Coast Premiere
A man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son. When he is humiliated by a group of locals, the man is drawn into a conflict that keeps rising and pushes him to his breaking point.
Spotlight Screening
RE-ANIMATOR (dir. Stuart Gordon)
World Premiere of the 4K Restoration & 40th Anniversary Screening
After an odd new medical student arrives on campus, a dedicated local and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue.
This special theatrical screening will feature the World Premiere of the new pristine 40th Anniversary 4K UHD restoration of Re-Animator from Ignite Films and Eagle Rock Pictures, which is available for pre-order on Blu-ray and 4K UHD discs at Ignite-Films.com. (It includes 2 hours and 47 minutes of brand-new bonus materials, plus all classic legacy features.)
Feature Films
ALMA & THE WOLF (dir. Michael Patrick Jann)
World Premiere
Horror and madness emerge from the shrouded mists of coastal Oregon. A violent wolf attack. A missing son. The appearance of a dangerous and seductive woman from the past. How are they connected? At the cost of his sanity, Deputy REN Accord (Ethan Embry) must unravel the mystery and discover the truth before time runs out.
BEST WISHES TO ALL (dir. Yûta Shimotsu)
New England Premiere
A young woman visits her grandparents on a break from university. While she’s there, she discovers a dark secret about them and potentially herself.
CHAIN REACTIONS (dir. Alexandre O. Philippe)
East Coast Premiere
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre‘s impact on 5 artists—Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, Karyn Kusama—through interviews and outtakes, exploring how it shaped their art and psyche from childhood trauma.
ESCAPE FROM THE 21ST CENTURY (dir. Yang Li)
New England Premiere
Three friends discover that they have the power to travel back and forth 20 years with a sneeze. However, the future is not as good as they hope, and they need to take on the responsibility of saving the world.
FRÉWAKA (dir. Aislinn Clarke)
New England Premiere
Haunted by a personal tragedy, home care worker, Shoo, is sent to a remote village to care for an agoraphobic woman who fears the neighbors as much as she fears the Na Sídhe — sinister entities who she believes abducted her decades before. As the two develop a strangely deep connection, Shoo is consumed by the old woman’s paranoia, rituals, and superstitions, eventually confronting the horrors of her own past.
FUCKTOYS (dir. Annapurna Sriram)
East Coast Premiere
A lush 16mm fever dream that reimagines The Fool’s Journey of the Major Arcana of the Tarot through the story of AP—a rosy young woman seeking salvation from a curse.
HEAD LIKE A HOLE (dir. Stefan MacDonald-Labelle)
East Coast Premiere
In financial dire straits, a man accepts a strange, high-paying job where he must take up residence in a home and measure a hole in the wall of the basement to determine whether or not it’s growing in size.
MUERTE EN LA PLAYA (dir. Enrique Gómez Vadillo)
Repertory Screening
A disturbed young man who was molested by his teacher begins murdering those around him who he sees as responsible for his trauma while trying to overcome his own homosexual desires.
SISTER MIDNIGHT (dir. Karan Kandhari)
New England Premiere
A newly arranged marriage sees an oddball couple shoved together in a small Mumbai shack with paper-thin walls. They are alone, awkward, and together. Cranky Uma does her best to cope with the heat, her complete lack of domestic skills, nosy neighbors, and her bumbling spouse until one night she discovers strange new feral cravings.
THE UGLY STEPSISTER (dir. Emilie Blichfeldt)
East Coast Premiere
In a twisted take on the classic Cinderella story, ‘The Ugly Stepsister’ follows Elvira as she battles to compete with her insanely beautiful stepsister. In a fairy-tale kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira will go to any lengths to catch the Prince’s eye. ‘The Ugly Stepsister’ is the gory tale of the blood and sweat, grit, and gold that goes into making Elvira the belle of the ball.
VULCANIZADORA (dir. Joel Potrykus)
MA Premiere
Two friends trudge through a Michigan forest with the intention of following through on a disturbing pact. After they fail, one of them must return home to deal with the legal and emotional repercussions.
BOSTON UNDERGROUND 2025 SHORTS LINEUP
THE DUNWICH HORRORS – NEW ENGLAND HORROR
Good Looking Out dir. by Seth Chatfield
Ache dir. by Mike Canale
Damn Handy dir. by Peter Filardi
Followers dir. by Miriam Olken
Forever War dir. by Shana Figueroa
Katie’s Skin dir. by Steven Schloss
Methuselah dir. by Nathan Sellers
My Child dir. by Deniz Akyurek
Sogno Rosso (Red Dream) dir. by Coco Roy
TRIGGER WARNING – MIDNIGHT BLOCK
Brothers Beastly dir. by Peter J. Hartsock
Burn Out dir. by Russell Goldman
F#cker dir. by Amir Baikatov
Mopsorden dir. by Julien Jauniaux
Rejected dir. by Rene R Rivas
Terminal Emulator dir. by Benjamin Capps
The Night Has 1000 Desires! dir. by Vance Osteen
LOVE TO LOVE YOU MAYBE – COMEDY BLOCK
Banjo dir. by Cameron Poletti
But He’s Gay dir. by Michael Calciano
Catamaran dir. by Joseph Rocco Plescia
Erection and Destruction dir. by Eddie Mullins
Handball dir. by Eli Beutel
Make Me A Pizza dir. by Talia Shea Levin
SexySweat dir. by Luke Condzal
The Streetlight dir. by Sophia Parella
The Time Capsule dir. by Michael Charron
There Will Be Womanly Wiles dir. by Nicole Higgins
RAGDOLL DANCE – ANIMATION BLOCK
A Walk in the Park dir. by Jay Marks
Demons in the Closet dir. by James Smith
Howl if You Love Me dir. by John R. Dilworth
Les Bêtes dir. by Michael Granberry
Lilly Visits the Hospital dir. by The Bum Family
Peeping dir. by Yixuan Wang
Pippy and The Typist dir. by Rachel Nemez
Pocket Princess dir. by Olivia Loccisano
Poppa dir. by Peter Ahern
Red Thumb dir. by Kolya Kishinsky, Geneva Huffman
The Garden Sees Fire dir. by Kiera Faber
The House of Weird dir. by Mark Reyes
MUST HAVE GOT LOST – SHORTS BLOCK
Belly Belly dir. by Gabriel Carnick
Good Boy dir. by Colin Russell
How To Clean The Dishes dir. by Benjamin Thomae
Macula dir. by Julietta Korbel
Nadir dir. by Jack Galvin
Perfectly a Strangeness dir. by Alison McAlpine
Rabbit dir. by Nathan Catucci
The Audacity dir. by Desmond Spranklin
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