2025 in review: Dundead
It's been a record-breaking year for horror, cult and weird cinema at DCA
2025 has been a bumper year for Dundead.
We've spent the year celebrating horror, cult and weird cinema with monthly screenings, our festival weekend in May and a special Halloween season throughout October, and it's resulted in our biggest year yet! Check out our Letterboxd list for all the films we've shown and see how many you were there for.
With all our screenings for 2025 now complete, we've been taking some time to look back on the year. We've put together a report, which highlights just how much Dundead has grown - download it below to have a read. And we asked you to share your favourite Dundead films and moments from 2025. First up, here's a message from Dundead programmer, Michael Coull...
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2025 is somehow almost over, and yet again, you have all made this another exceptional year for Dundead. Both our festival and our Halloween season have been the best-attended in Dundead’s history for another year. Your open-minded and enthusiastic approach to horror and genre is such an important part of Dundead. Whether we’re delving into silent cinema, or exploitation films, or cutting-edge horror, or we’re enjoying some good old-fashioned scares together on the big screen, you really bring so much thought and energy to everything we do. As Dundead grows, that energy is noted by all of our guests, filmmakers whose work we show and everyone here at DCA.Michael Coull Dundead Programmer
Dundead Report 2025
Festival
Our 2025 festival took place from Thu 8 to Sun 11 May and saw us welcome more horror fans than ever.
We screened six new films alongside a retrospective strand of six vintage Italian horror titles. We were delighted to welcome special guests Mike Muncer of The Evolution of Horror podcast, writer and podcaster Becky Darke and Canadian short filmmaker Colin G Cooper. Our festival illustration was designed by local artist Katriona Gillon and our 2025 festival t-shirt sold-out. We loved seeing so many of you sporting yours during the festival and beyond.
New for this year was the introduction of a Green Room for relaxing between screenings, badge making where we created 'I survived Dundead 2025' badges, and a collaboration with Holy Goat Brewing to create a limited-edition Dundead IPA, which went down a treat and sold-out at Jute Café Bar during the festival weekend.
Take a look at our round-up video below to relive the festival fun.
Dundead 2025
Halloween
We celebrated Halloween in style by filling October with Dundead screenings. We showed six films including sold-out anniversary screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Phantom of the Opera. We also had drag performances from CLIMAX Dundee, showed a preview of a new 4K Restoration of The Descent with an introduction by Dr Lucy Fife Donaldson (Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University of St Andrews) and screened Evilspeak from an original VHS tape.
Our Halloween celebrations also saw us markThe Phantom of the Opera’s 100th anniversary by commissioning a new score by acclaimed Scottish composers Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman. This special event toured five cinemas across Scotland, including our sold-out Halloween screening at DCA. This was made possible thanks to support by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, awarding funding on behalf of Screen Scotland and the BFI National Lottery.
Dundead Halloween 2025
Monthly screenings
We screened a further 13 films throughout 2025, ranging from our 80th anniversary screening of Dead of Night to a special preview screening of Friendship.
We started in January with Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter and enjoyed two screenings in February with Presence and Blue Velvet, shown in tribute to David Lynch. March was The People's Joker with an introduction from Ruin Carroll who voiced one of the characters in the film. In April we revisited Picnic at Hanging Rock for it's 50th anniversary and in June rewatched 28 Days Later ahead of the release of 28 Years Later.
In the later half of the year we had a double-bill of M3GAN, celebrated the 70th anniversary of The Night of the Hunter, enjoyed some gooey fun with The Toxic Avenger and saw the year out with a 45th anniversary screening of The Shining.
Your Dundead favourites of 2025
Thank you to everyone who joined us in 2025! Whether you came along for one film or all of them, we've loved sharing so many scares, thrills and laughs with you. Reading your comment cards, Letterboxd reviews and chatting to you at our screenings is always a highlight - do keep all your reviews and feedback coming.
The dates are set for our 2026 festival (make sure to mark Thu 7 - Sun 10 May 2026 in your diaries) and we've got some great screenings in store for you at the start of the year. Michael shares more:
Our first screening for 2026 is on sale now (hello Ben Wheatley), and I’m already planning further ahead. I can’t wait to enjoy some more brilliant films together in 2026.
Upcoming Dundead screenings
Find out more about Dundead
