‹ Back

(CIFF Curtain Raiser) Five Films to Keep on Your Radar (If you Like the Dark, the Weird, and the Uncanny)

By. Professor Horror

                                      

As a new inhabitant of Chicago, I am excited to attend the Chicago International Film Festival for the first time. This festival has always been a place where cinephiles of all stripes converge, and even though my interests lean heavily toward the dark and macabre, it still offers plenty for me and other lovers of the uncanny. While the 61st edition (October 15–26, 2025) will feature a wealth of prestige dramas, star vehicles, and international award contenders, CIFF has also carved out an impressive slate of films that dwell in the shadows: thrillers, gothic reinventions, eerie ghost stories, and biting dark comedies. For festivalgoers who want to balance the sobering with the sinister, the absurd with the uncanny, here are five films I am most looking forward to. They may not all be marketed as horror in the strictest sense, but each touches the genre’s edges…whether through monsters, paranoia, or the quietly terrifying spaces that open up between people.

                                                             

BUGONIA (Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos)

This is easily the film I’m most eager to catch at the festival, in large part because I adored Yorgos Lanthimos’s last outing, Poor Things. Lanthimos has carved out a reputation for delivering cinema that is equal parts funny, disturbing, and defiantly alien, and BUGONIA looks poised to continue that tradition. The film reimagines the cult Korean sci-fi thriller Save the Green Planet! through Lanthimos’s signature lens, centering on two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a corporate executive they believe is an alien preparing Earth’s destruction. On paper, the premise could veer into camp, but Lanthimos thrives on awkward silences, ritualized absurdities, and unsettling tonal shifts. If his past work is any indication, BUGONIA may balance psychological tension with biting dark comedy while doubling as an allegory about paranoia, misinformation, and ecological collapse. I’m expecting sharp humor laced with dread…the kind of experience that unsettles as much as it entertains.  

                                                  

FRANKENSTEIN (Dir: Guillermo del Toro)

Few filmmakers inspire the kind of devotion from horror fans that Guillermo del Toro does, and FRANKENSTEIN may well be his most anticipated project in years. Del Toro has circled Mary Shelley’s iconic novel for decades, and CIFF offers the first glimpse of how his vision of the creature and creator might finally take form. His films have always carried the atmosphere of a dark fairy tale (lush, ornate, and tinged with melancholy) which makes FRANKENSTEIN a story seemingly destined for the del Toro touch. Based on his past work, audiences can anticipate gothic grandeur paired with emotional intimacy, a film that is less about shocks than tragedy, asking us to pity the monster as much as fear him. Shelley’s tale of creation, grief, and otherness is already a story about beauty and horror entwined, and in del Toro’s hands it could become the ultimate meditation on why monsters haunt both our imaginations and our private anxieties about power, family, and loss.  

                                                       

A USEFUL GHOST (Dir: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)

Every so often, a film appears on the festival circuit that feels destined to become a conversation piece, and A USEFUL GHOST looks to be that film at CIFF. This debut feature from Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke already made history at Cannes Critics’ Week, becoming the first Thai film ever to win the prestigious Grand Prix, and its recent buzz at Fantastic Fest only heightened the anticipation. What sets it apart is how it reshapes the ghost story: the spirits here don’t simply haunt people but return to inhabit ordinary objects, transforming the familiar into something both uncanny and deeply symbolic. Early descriptions suggest moments of surreal boldness (including one that has already raised eyebrows) but the real power of the film seems to lie in its thematic core. Memory, presence, and resistance are woven into its haunting fabric, promising a meditation on how the past refuses to disappear. At CIFF, I expect A USEFUL GHOST to unsettle not with screams, but with the quiet, lingering weight of its strangeness…the kind of film that feels less like a scare and more like a reckoning.  

                                                   

NO OTHER CHOICE (Dir: Park Chan-wook)

When Park Chan-wook unveils a new film, it feels less like a release and more like an event, and NO OTHER CHOICE is shaping up to be one of CIFF’s most talked-about titles. Park, the visionary behind Oldboy, Thirst, and Decision to Leave, has built his reputation on blending shocking violence with sly humor, creating works that are as unnerving as they are intoxicating. This time, he turns to Donald Westlake’s novel The Ax as loose inspiration, reshaping it into what promises to be a satire that spirals into nightmare. The story follows a man undone by unemployment, whose moral compromises start small but quickly snowball into paranoia and absurd brutality. While billed as a dark comedy, the tone is expected to be anything but gentle (more likely a razor-edged critique). At CIFF, NO OTHER CHOICE is poised to occupy that dangerous sweet spot Park thrives in: the place where morality collapses and human desperation becomes the most terrifying monster of all.

                                           

DRACULA (Dir: Radu Jude)

Vampires may be eternal, but Radu Jude’s DRACULA promises to push the myth into places no one could anticipate. Known for films like Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Jude has built a reputation as a cinematic provocateur as he is someone who blends satire, vulgarity, and intellectual rigor into a dizzying mix that both infuriates and fascinates. His DRACULA runs a daunting three hours, but rather than discouraging me, that scale makes it even more intriguing. If reports from its early festival stops are any indication, this is not a faithful retelling of Bram Stoker’s gothic tale, but a sprawling, chaotic interrogation of power, media, politics, and obsession, laced with outrageous humor and deliberately abrasive flourishes. Generative AI, philosophical tangents, and vulgar comedy all seem to collide in a project designed to overwhelm as much as entertain. At CIFF, I expect DRACULA to be less about fangs and coffins and more about how myths mutate in the age of misinformation and attention economies. It could very well be the festival’s most polarizing experience (hilarious, exhausting, and unshakably bold) and that makes it unmissable.