MONSTER FEST 2026 MELBOURNE COMPLETE PROGRAM REVEALED

With just weeks to go before MONSTER FEST descends upon Cinema Nova from October 2-10, we’re thrilled to finally unleash the complete program for our 2026 Melbourne festival – nine days of horror, cult, exploitation, documentaries, retrospective favourites, homegrown horrors and assorted acts of cinematic blasphemy.

And while we’ve already summoned two waves of films, we weren’t quite finished…

Leading our final additions is the Special Advance Screening of Australian slasher THE ONLY ONE, which will open MONSTER FEST 2026 on Friday October 2. Directed by Michael Schwarz and starring Mel Jarnson, Saphira Moran, Aaron Glenane, John Kim, Lincoln Younes and Sam Delich, THE ONLY ONE follows a struggling actress who returns home for a friend’s wedding only to discover somebody is systematically murdering their way through her extensive collection of former lovers. Schwarz will be joined by cast and crew for an Opening Night Q&A.

Our homegrown horrors continue with the World Premiere of Timothy Spanos’ NANCY NANCY, a surreal and darkly comic home-invasion nightmare starring Tim Burns, Ryan Heath, Carla Bonner, Zoe Bertram and Cameron Nugent. When a mysterious woman calling herself Nancy Nancy barges into the home of a reclusive man and his overbearing sister, she refuses to leave and instead subjects her unwilling hosts to an increasingly bizarre campaign of control, humiliation and psychological torment.

Also making its Australian Premiere is Matt Michalik and Rupert Evans’ BLOODLUST, a lean, mean slice of post-apocalyptic Australian revenge cinema. Expanded from a ten-minute university short into a feature shot over four months with a crew of just four, BLOODLUST follows a survivor through the decaying remains of civilisation as grief gives way to an increasingly brutal obsession with revenge. Fresh from its World Premiere at London’s Raindance Film Festival, this is independent filmmaking stripped to the bone and soaked in blood.

We’re also taking a detour to Ghana with the Victorian Premiere of THE TALLER THEY COME – Presented By Trasharama, no less – the latest descent into cinematic madness from Australian filmmaker, Trash Video founder and The Search For Weng Weng director Andrew Leavold. Leavold stars as wannabe exploitation auteur Alby Wrangler, who lands in Ghana and cons his way onto a Kumawood filmmaker’s kung-fu/spaghetti-western remake of The Harder They Come – starring little people. Part mockumentary, part action-film parody and part filmmaking nervous breakdown, it’s a suitably deranged celebration of what happens when ambition, obsession and absolutely no common sense collide.

Meanwhile, the garden has well and truly gone to Hell with a special big-screen preview of the first two episodes of the new Stan Original horror-comedy GNOMES. Starring Asa Butterfield, Tess Haubrich and Megan Smart, the series sees a fading country town besieged by an army of murderous garden gnomes on the eve of its inaugural Gnome-a-Palooza festival. Creator and producer Joel Kohn will be joined by producers Richard Kelly and John Molloy and writers Tegan Higginbotham and Paul F. Verhoeven for a post-screening Q&A on bringing the pint-sized apocalypse to life.

Also joining the final wave is the Australian Premiere of Ben Sottak’s HALLOWARRIOR. Three years after a plague has wiped out humanity, 16-year-old Pumpkin believes she’s the last girl on Earth. Determined to celebrate her favourite night of the year regardless, she turns her abandoned suburban home into the ultimate Halloween party and sends an invitation out over the radio. Unfortunately, somebody answers. Starring Milly Shapiro and Shannyn Sossamon, HALLOWARRIOR turns the last Halloween on Earth into a post-apocalyptic home-invasion fight for survival.

And finally, bringing MONSTER FEST 2026 to a suitably unhinged conclusion is our Closing Night film, the Australian Premiere of DRAG. Produced by the DeVito family, DRAG follows two sisters (Lizzy Caplan & Lucy DeVito) who break into a remote house, only to discover they’ve picked exactly the wrong place to trespass. What follows is a wholly unpredictable, viciously funny descent into violence and madness that somehow also finds room for John Stamos dancing around in his underwear – a lot. If ever there was a film made to send MONSTER FEST out on a high, strange and slightly confused note, this is it.

And because feature films alone could never contain the strange things people send us each year, MONSTER FEST 2026 will showcase short-form filmmaking across four dedicated programs: SCHOOL OF SHOCK: MONSTER FEST STUDENT SHORTS, BLOOD, GUTS AND BAD DECISIONS, DARK FORCES and LOSING THE PLOT – spanning slashers, monsters, demons, cults, the supernatural, body horror, black comedy, exploitation, bloodshed and all manner of bad behaviour.

For those whose definition of “short film” requires considerably fewer standards and considerably more bodily fluids, Dick Dale’s legendary TRASHARAMA returns with another lovingly curated collection of cinematic filth, trash, gore and good taste gone horribly wrong.

Our previously announced handmade sword-and-sorcery epic KYLGOR IN THE GRISLY ABYSS also gets some company, screening as part of KYLGOR IN THE GRISLY ABYSS AND OTHER ANIMATED ABOMINATIONS, a feature-length celebration of independent animation pairing Mason Newton-DeRushie’s puppet fantasy with a collection of strange, gruesome and handcrafted animated shorts.

And calling all gorehounds, horror tragics and people carrying an unhealthy amount of completely useless genre knowledge: MONSTER FEST once again joins forces with the MELBOURNE HORROR FILM SOCIETY for MONSTER FEST x MHFS HORROR TRIVIA on Saturday October 10. If you’ve spent decades retaining information about Italian zombies, regional slashers and which actor played the third victim in a film nobody else remembers, your poor life choices may finally pay off.

These final additions join our already announced 2026 lineup of BLOODY TENNIS, THE GLORIOUS DEAD, I LOVE PARIS, JEFFREY DOLLMER, DEVIL’S DISCIPLE: THE NIGHT STALKER, BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL, EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, DOGGOD, FULL MOON RISING: THE CHARLES BAND STORY, PINOCCHIO UNSTRUNG, RUBBERHEAD: THE LIFE & MONSTERS OF STEVE JOHNSON, GODMOTHER, TURA!, THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, SATAN’S CHEERLEADERS, PARASITE 3D, THE DEVIL WITHIN HER and THE FINAL CONFLICT: OMEN III.

All up, MONSTER FEST 2026 takes over Cinema Nova from October 2-10, with a whole lot of new discoveries, premieres, cult favourites, documentaries, shorts, special events and assorted acts of cinematic blasphemy crammed in between.

But the fun doesn’t stop there, feast your eyes upon the official MONSTER FEST 2026 ARTWORK, created by Garreth Gibson from Gibson Graphix and inspired by this year’s descent into Hell.

If you’d like to wear our particular brand of blasphemy, the artwork has also been resurrected as the official MONSTER FEST 2026 T-shirt, available to PRE-ORDER NOW.

The complete program, schedule and festival passes are available now.

Get possessed… at MONSTER FEST 2026.