Boston Underground Film Festival To Feature THE SURFER and Restoration of RE-ANIMATOR
New England Friends! That most wonderful time of the year is approaching for the fantastic Boston Underground Film Festival. Having attended twice, I can attest not only to the quality and diversity of the programming, but the amazing staff and venue, and great ebergy that comes from filmmakers and fans coming together to celebrate the best in alternative cinema.
More details in the press release below, plus links for the full schedule and information to buy your tickets. Go go go!
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 19th–23rd, 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.
Another major highlight: the world premiere of the 4K restoration of Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator for its 40th anniversary, with horror icon Barbara Crampton in attendance. This landmark screening will showcase the brand-new 4K UHD restoration from Ignite Films and Eagle Rock Pictures.
BUFF’s East Coast Premieres include Fucktoys, Annapurna Sriram’s 16mm Tarot-fueled hallucinogenic odyssey, with Sriram and actor Sadie Scott in attendance. From Canada, Stefan MacDonald-Labelle’s Head Like a Hole (with MacDonald-Labelle in attendance) delivers existential horror in the form of an ever-growing void that lurks in a basement, waiting for someone—anyone—to notice.
Among the New England Premieres, Yûta Shimotsu’s Best Wishes to All delivers a skin-crawling, slow-burn J-horror where family, tradition, and generational happiness conceal a deeply rotten core. Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister gleefully shreds Cinderella to pieces, crafting a body-horror fairy tale about the brutal lengths we go to for beauty. And Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight plunges a newlywed into a genre-blending fever dream of misanthropic mayhem, self-destruction, and darkly comic carnage.
For fans of maximalist sci-fi lunacy, BUFF is thrilled to present the New England Premiere of Yang Li’s Escape from the 21st Century, where three teens discover that adulthood is a dystopian nightmare after sneezing themselves 20 years into the future. Meanwhile, Alexandre O. Philippe’s docu Chain Reactions (East Coast Premiere) dissects the seismic influence of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, featuring insights from Stephen King, Karyn Kusama, and Takashi Miike.
BUFF also welcomes the Massachusetts Premiere of Vulcanizadora, Joel Potrykus’ latest descent into existential dread, following two friends on a doomed pilgrimage through the Michigan woods. Meanwhile, in the New England Premiere of Fréwaka, Aislinn Clarke crafts a haunting portrait of trauma and disorientation, as a nursing student’s past bleeds into her present, warping reality itself; the first Irish-language horror film!
BUFF isn’t just about the new and the next—it also honors forgotten, forbidden, and freshly resurrected gems from the past. This year, we’re thrilled to present a rare repertory screening of Muerte en la playa (1991), a queer-coded, blood-soaked, telenovelesque Mexican thriller ripe for rediscovery courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive.
And of course, it wouldn’t be BUFF without shorts programming that spotlights the best in animation, transgressive experiments, dark comedy, homegrown horror, and genre-inspired music videos. Expect boundary-pushing, bite-sized brilliance that will disturb, delight, and possibly traumatize in equal measure.
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.
