First Impression: Various Vampires at Grimmfest 2025

I have just got back from Grimmfest 2025 and have set to writing up my first impressions of the vampire and vampire adjacent films I saw over a great festival weekend. However, firstly, a shout out to the festival organisers and volunteers who make it such a great event year after year. A shout out to Hellbound Media, particularly Mark Adams for the chat, and also to Catherine Green who was at the festival on the Saturday. I will, of course, offer full thoughts when the films become available for home viewing.

The first film I want to offer an impression of was Landlord, which was the most traditionally vampire-genre film of those I intend to cover.

Directed and written by Remington Smith, the film follows an unnamed bounty hunter (Adama Abramson) and one of the strengths of the film was in the great characterisation with this unnamed protagonist. She arrives at an apartment complex on foot and rents a room for a week, no questions asked. She is there tracking down someone, or more accurately a briefcase he carries, but soon notices strange things.

Investigating, what sounds like, a domestic disturbance she is blocked by manager Christopher (Lance Gerard), who seems in cahoots with the local sheriff (J. Barrett Cooper), and the next day follows the manager as he removes the apartment contents and takes them to a farmstead owned by the Lawrence family. She discovers that the residents of the apartment have been dismembered and are being fed to the pigs.

Alex and the Bounty Hunter

Back at the apartment complex she discovers that the apartment with young resident Alex (Cohen Cooper) has been targeted. She enters, too late to save Alex’s mother but intervening in an attack on Alex himself. It is, of course, a vampire attack. The conceit of this being, as listed by Grimmfest, “If vampires can’t come into your home without being invited in, what would happen if they owned your housing?” The vampire, John Lawrence (William McKinney), owns the apartment complex and many residents are transient in the slum housing, easy to disappear. There is a commentary here about the landlord class as vampiric.

bitten

The bounty hunter and Alex become loose ends to tie up, of course. A nice touch came about in her not even recognising what the vampire is - despite getting up from a head shot and biting her neck, Alex is the observant one, though their knowledge of lore is limited. I liked the grittiness of this and, as mentioned, the characterisation that was built around the bounty hunter. If I had a criticism, it would be in the lighting, as I felt that the night scenes were overly dark – though that might be a screening issue rather than a production issue. The imdb page is here.

The next film to mention is Spanish offering Lily’s Ritual, directed by Manu Herrera. Possibly best described as “vampire adjacent” it starts off as a witchcraft film with three witches, Lola (Patricia Peñalver), Leo (Elena Gallardo) and Laura (Eve Ryan) taking Lily (Maggie García) out into the countryside for initiation into witchcraft as their fourth – which, of course, has overtones of the Craft. Unlike that, however, which had a power corrupts theme, these witches already had a darker purpose in mind.

Lilith

Rather than initiation, Lily was to be used as a centrepiece for a dedication to Lilith – this could be a spoiler except it is listed in the film’s blurb. As to whether they will succeed and whether Lily can survive – well that is a spoiler too far. However, I will say that this was probably my favourite film of the festival and, of course, the use of Lilith makes it of genre interest. The imdb page is here.

The third film to mention is Jake Myers’s Kombucha. I did not go into this expecting a vampire element, although the film does aim at the vampiric nature of corporations. It follows Luke (Terrence Carey) a struggling musician who is tempted – due to pressure from girlfriend Elyse (Paige Bourne) and a recommendation from ex-bandmate Andy (Jesse Kendall) – into signing up to a corporate job. The corporation, Symbio, is more than a little cult-like and forces everyone to drink a specific kombucha.

As Luke starts to change, Elyse meets the mother (Charin Alvarez) of a previous employee (Magdalena Conway) who believes that the corporation is made up of vampires – and it is that belief in vampires that puts this firmly on the radar, as well as the use of a tropes such as blood in the kombucha and the efficacy of garlic as a weapon to combat the sentient scoby at the heart of the film. A genuinely funny side-swipe at corporate mentality. The imdb page is here.

The final film to mention is Sergio Pinheiro’s Wormtown. This very much uses tropes and the Grimmfest synopsis suggested it had “just a pinch of classic vampire lore and a sly tip of the hat to Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND.” Set in a town where the vast majority of inhabitants are infected by worms, which have infiltrated their entire system, with a large “heart worm” that feeds on their blood and “brain worms” that alter their minds, the worms that burrow and infect are reminiscent of the blood worms in the Strain.

caught in the sun

The worms are impacted by loud sounds, modern signals (such as Bluetooth) and bright light. This is one of our tropes as being caught in the sun is deadly, with the worms quickly turning on their host. The similes with I am Legend mentioned are there and, more so, I felt a homage to the Omega Man in the scarring of infected flesh, the retreat from technology (although not as radical), and the cult-like behaviours. I also felt it tonally had a bit of a feel of Stake Land and I did really enjoy this one. The imdb page is here.