We cannot wait to watch these 5 horror movies premiering at Sundance 2025

Sundance has unveiled the line-up for the 2025 festival, taking place from January 23 to February 2 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year's program features several exciting new horror movies, including a dark spin on Cinderella and the latest from A24.

Each year, Sundance has a special "Midnight" section designed for genre films that are generally meant to shock and provoke. This category usually includes the festival's horror and thriller films that might debut at the festival. Below, we've highlighted five Midnight selections we're most excited to see at Sundance 2025! Tickets for the festival are on sale now.

Rabbit Trap

Rabbit Trap is a British folk horror film starring Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen as a couple who relocate to a secluded house in the lush forests of Wales. There, they begin hearing strange music that seems to act as an invocation of sorts, inviting ancient folk magic into their holmes in the form of a nameless rabbit trapper intent on infiltrating the couples' lives.

Daphne (McEwen) is a musician obsessed with their new home's many tape machines and oscillators, while her husband, Darcy (Patel) is busy in the field looking for recordings. Elijah Wood serves as a producer on this intimate dark fantasy film.

Opus

A24's next horror film stars award-winning actress Ayo Edebiri as an ambitious young writer named Ariel invited to the secluded desert compound of a popular pop star who mysteriously disappeared 30 years prior.

Described as a "flashy pop-horror" film, Opus promises to expose the cult of celebrity worship as Adebiri's character soon becomes immersed in a dark world of fans and journalists who all become integral to the star's twisted agenda. Like many of this year's Sundance films, Opus is a debut film for writer and director Mark Anthony Green.

Together

Real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco are re-teaming for this freaky body horror film about codependence. Together marks the feature directorial debut of writer/director Michael Shanks. The film centers on a couple who relocate from the big city to a more isolated existence, cutting them off from their friends and overall sense of belonging. The pair begins undergoing a transformation that affects every part of their lives, from their relationship to their literal flesh.

Touch Me

Adding a phrase like "Hentai-infused sexual abandon" to your film description is bound to raise eyebrows and get people intrigued. Such is the case for this inventive sci-fi film from queer filmmaker Addison Heimann.

The film follows a pair of codependent best friends and their encounter with an alien narcissist with an addictive touch. Yes, even extraterrestrials can be narcissists! Heimann was inspired by the boldness of Japanese cinema from the '60s and '70s, with her latest film described as the best kind of fever dream. The cast includes Olivia Taylor Dudley (The Magicians), Lou Taylor-Pucci (Evil Dead), and Criminal Minds star Paget Brewster.

The Ugly Stepsister

Given the uptick in films based on warped versions of beloved fairy tales, it comes as an exciting development that Sundance will feature Emilie Blichfedlt's brutal film The Ugly Stepsister, a retelling of Cinderella that adheres much more closely to the original darkness featured in the original story by The Brothers Grimm.

Instead of focusing on Cinderella, The Ugly Stepsister hones in on her stepsister, Elvira, who is obsessed with beauty. "But where fairy tale Cinderellas have silkworms, this one has tapeworms." Yuck. In some ways, The Ugly Stepsister sounds like a fairy-tale version of The Substance, as it is described as a "tongue-in-cheek body horror" film about a 19th-century surgical makeover.