The Horror, the Horror Descends on Rotterdam

When I interviewed Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart ahead of the beginning of Rotterdam 2026, one subject we touched upon – although it wasn’t included in the final version of the article – was the wide array of genre pictures in the overall program, particularly films of the horror variety (or, in some cases, science fiction with horror elements, as seen in the self-described “academic noir” Chronovisor).

Kaludjercic acknowledged this as part of her long-term strategy for the festival, specifically the aim to diversify a genre catalogue that, while always present in Rotterdam, tended to originate mainly from the Asian continent, particularly the South-East territories. And while Asia retained a prime spot, including some vintage Japanese titles in the V-Cinema retrospective and a restored 3D version of the Korean classic The Devil and the Beauty in the Cinema Regained sidebar, the general experience was a very global one.

Whether it was haunted toilets in Brazil (Bowels of Hell), witchcraft in the Basque region (Gaua) or a father in South Korea trying to bring his teenage child back from the undead (My Daughter Is a Zombie), there was no shortage of thrills and scares in the context of the 55th edition of IFFR, including in the two competitions, Tiger (Yellow Cake) and Big Screen (Talking to a Stranger).

Granted, checking out the various offerings also led to the one proper dud I saw during my stay in Rotterdam, namely the videogame adaptation Return to Silent Hill. Still, the screening I attended, at the IMAX theater inside the Pathé Schouwburgplein, was fairly packed, suggesting many festivalgoers – presumably fans of the franchise – had been curious to see if director Christophe Gans would be able to recreate the unsettling mood he conjured up in the first Silent Hill movie two decades ago (spoiler alert: he wasn’t).

Such a widespread buffet, particularly with the films vying for prizes beyond the Audience Award, was a refreshing sight in the context of a festival that doesn’t cater specifically to genre fans. It is no secret that horror, not unlike comedy, is still viewed as “lesser” when it comes to putting together the lineup of Category A events that, by reputation at least, are borderline snobbish (this despite Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux’s famous quote about preferring “a good commercial film over a bad arthouse one”).

More often than not, horror films are relegated to a specifically mounted Midnight section, even when it comes to so-called “elevated” pieces of genre fare (a notion the 2022 Scream legacy gleefully poked fun at). In his 2017 book Official Selection, about the behind-the-scenes of the 2016 Cannes program, Frémaux admits he lost Julia Ducournau’s Raw to the Critics Week on account of offering her the Midnight slot as opposed to one in Competition (he has since made up for that by selecting Titane and Alpha in the main section, with the former winning the Palme d’Or).

Of course, sometimes it’s a matter of distributors getting cold feet: Venice has notoriously struggled with getting American horror fare in its lineup, and supposedly managed to land 2021’s Halloween Kills – whose 2018 predecessor went directly to Toronto – only by giving a Career Golden Lion to its star Jamie Lee Curtis. Berlin rarely screens them on account of having dates that are generally not ideal for horror releases in the US (in terms of quality), but the upcoming 76th edition promises at least some thrills in competition with Nightborn, the new film by Finnish director Hanna Bergholm, who made a splash on the festival circuit in 2022 with her creature feature/body horror hybrid Hatching.

Going back to Rotterdam, such an array of scary films is probably also an accurate reflection of how concerned directors are responding to what’s going on in the world. Such a thought brings back a screening I attended in 2025, for Alexandre O. Philippe’s riveting documentary Chain Reactions. While introducing it at the Swiss premiere in Fribourg, and looking back on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s birth as a somewhat rage-filled commentary on early 1970s America, Philippe came to the conclusion that we’re no more than five years away from a similarly masterful, era defining piece of US horror cinema, given the current political landscape. It’s an exciting prospect, but also a terrifying one. To be continued at next year’s IFFR? We shall see…