The 2025 Cannes Film Festival did what it always does. Glamour. Global cinema. Industry backroom deals. Once again the French Riviera became ground zero for the film world’s movers, shakers, and dreamers. This year leaned heavily into genre experiments and international storytelling, mixing highbrow auteur films with scrappy indie provocations.
At the center of the madness was one surprise that nobody saw coming but everyone could not stop talking about. A film that sent a collective chill down the spine of buyers and critics alike. The Darkness Returns — from Stone Horus Media and XpandFilms — dropped into the festival’s bustling Marché du Film and promptly hijacked the conversation. A strange, unsettling genre cocktail that cuts across generations and dimensions.
It was not even supposed to be there officially. Unveiled quietly to a handpicked circle of distributors and sales agents, this psychological thriller fused with supernatural horror started gaining traction through whispers before exploding into a full-on buzz bomb. The director? William Butler. A horror veteran whose resume includes Madhouse and Furnace. His latest effort tells a story that kicks off on the Day of the Dead in 1975, during a midnight screening at a long-abandoned movie theater. Audience meets screen. Reality collapses. The crowd finds itself facing not just ghosts but their own past sins.
The film jumps between three cursed timelines — 1895, 1935, and 1975 — each linked by a legacy that refuses to stay buried. What emerges is more than just a horror flick. It is an intricate exploration of guilt, redemption, and the kind of generational trauma that does not fade quietly. Think The Shining meets The Others, with a little bit of Inception thrown in to keep you questioning reality.
And because no modern horror is complete without a tease, a post-credits scene set in 2015 drops a breadcrumb for a sequel. Hidden throughout the film are hints at not one but two possible prequels. In other words, this is more than a standalone scarefest. Stone Horus and XpandFilms are clearly thinking bigger — a full-blown franchise built on some seriously dense mythology.
The cast is a savvy mix of cult genre favorites and rising stars. Sal Landi (Hunter, Independence Day) and Cassandra Gava (Conan the Barbarian) bring the veteran cred. New blood includes Ashton Solecki, Mathew Gademske, Haley Lohrly, Ian S. Peterson, Elizabeth Chaidez, and Ben VanderMey. According to Cannes insiders, this blend of old and new faces was not just deliberate but a hot topic in buyer negotiations, offering cross-generational appeal.
The production muscle behind this? Carolina Brasil and Anselmo Martini from Stone Horus, teamed with Daniel Figueiredo of XpandFilms. This is not their first rodeo in the international market. Their fingerprints are all over high-concept projects that blur the line between arthouse and genre fare. Carolina’s knack for crafting a pitch that lands with both financiers and creatives played a major role in attracting interest from European and Southeast Asian production outfits. Word is, co-production deals are already circling.
At a private cocktail event at the Palais, the filmmakers peeled back the curtain for a small audience. They walked attendees through the film’s evolution — the hall-of-mirrors script, the challenge of keeping supernatural horror tethered to real human emotion, and the balancing act of spectacle versus substance.
The inside betting? This film is heading straight for the fall festival circuit. Toronto. Sitges. Fantastic Fest. All in play. A Halloween 2025 theatrical release is being quietly lined up. If the current buzz holds, that timing could be perfect for audiences craving horror that is as heady as it is haunting.
Franchise or not, The Darkness Returns has already left its footprint as one of Cannes’ most memorable curveballs. A reminder that the scariest stories are not always what happens on screen — sometimes it is what you bring into the theater yourself.
