Fantastic Fest 2025 Review: 13 DAYS TILL SUMMER, Cruelly Stylish Slasher

They may have their inspiration in Italy's gialli films, but slashers are something of an American artform.

It's here where all the big-name killers like Michael and Jason live, it's here where numerous franchises have seen sequel after sequel, and it's here where the subgenre has refused to die. Sure, they arrive with something of an ebb and flow from year to year, but new ones are never far away, as the ongoing Scream franchise and this year's Heart Eyes can attest.

International filmmakers haven't been slacking, though, and have joined in the fun over the years to deliver slasher gems like Cold Prey, The Last Matinee, Corpse Mania, and more. They typically follow a general structure while adding local flavor, and genre fans owe it to themselves to seek these movies out.

The latest non-English slasher worth your time is 13 Days till Summer, and it is as mean and bloody as it is slick and entertaining. Well, with one little caveat.

Antek (Teodor Koziar) is a nerdy teenager at odds with his older sister, Paulina (Katarzyna Galazka), and both are still troubled by their mother's decision to leave years earlier. Something new to stress over appears when he discovers a murdered man in the park just as his dad is preparing to go away for a business trip. Paulina isn't interested in her brother's whining as she hosts a small gathering of friends for a night of drink, drugs, and downtime, but they'll have to work together when a masked intruder takes control of their smart house, locks them all in, and starts killing them off one by one.

Director Bartosz M. Kowalski made his feature debut with the performatively dour Playground in 2016, but he found his true calling with his sophomore effort, 2020's Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight. A gory slasher in the vein of Friday the 13th, the film ticks all the expected "stay out of the woods!" subgenre boxes but does so with style and energy, marking Kowalski as a horror filmmaker to watch.

A sequel quickly followed along with two unrelated horror films, but Kowalski jumps back into the slasher pool with his latest, 13 Days till Summer, and it means business. Murders are varied and cruel, the killer's mask is memorably disturbing, and none of the protagonists annoy to the point that you're happy to see them killed. They just feel like teenagers and close friends, and while the choices they make under duress are both smart and stupid, you believe they're the choices they'd make.

In addition to some appealingly bloody kills via head and neck violence, the film's production design and cinematography make terrifically effective use of the smart home. A gorgeous structure built with steel, wood, and glass, the house affords even the most mundane shots with beauty and space that Kowalski uses to his advantage in crafting suspense beats and cat-and-mouse sequences that thrill.

The script, co-written by Kowalski and two others, offers up enough of a mystery as to the killer's identity to keep that element engaging, even if some viewers might find themselves a step ahead at a certain point. Their father is curiously only seen from the back -- a conscious choice with shots framed at the back of his head -- before he leaves for his trip. A local man who killed his family a year ago before disappearing is rumored to be back in town. An old flame of Paulina's new boyfriend, Piotrek, shows up at the house threatening self-harm with a butcher knife.

When the reveal does arrive, whether or not you see it coming, it does so with an impactful gut punch. The friendships and relationships here feel tangible, as do the losses, and the physical pain is magnified emotionally for the survivors. That translates over to viewers leaving us more concerned for their safety than most slasher films can muster, and it makes the kills feel even crueler in their execution.

The film avoids the ongoing trend of "horror as metaphor" and just delivers a tight, 80-minute tale of horror grounded in our unfortunately real world. That's where its themes and motivations rest, and the film is all the more unsettling for it.

For everything that 13 Days till Summer does right -- and it's nearly everything -- Kowalski and friends make an arguable misstep in the final minute. No spoilers here, and your mileage may vary on it, but the choice doesn't quite work as intended. It's meant to provoke and foster conversation, but it really only undermines much of what came before, while neutering some of the themes at play.

Still, 13 Days till Summer succeeds mightily on the strength of what comes before as it delivers exactly what the best slashers hope to do. It's a slick, bloody night of terror that lands thrills both attractive and grueling. Like most drunken summer nights, it's also a lot of fun... until it isn't.