Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark will also receive its Canadian premiere as the festival’s official closing film.

RedState will open the 15th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs July 14-Aug 7 in Montreal.

Kevin Smith’s horror-thriller is one of several Canadian premieres to take place at this year’s festival; others include the official closing film, the Guillermo Del Toro-produced Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, John Landis’ Burke And Hare and Australian shark thriller The Reef.

The festival will also host 16 world premieres including The Wicker Tree, Robin Hardy’s follow-up to The Wicker Man, and Carl Tibbetts’ thriller Retreat, starring Jamie Bell and Cillian Murphy.

As part of the fest’s spotlight series ‘Medicated Monsters’, director Adam Wingard will be in attendance at the festival to host every screening of his films, one of which will be the world premiere of his latest – What Fun We Were Having: 4 Stories About Date Rape – and each film will be accompanied by one of his shorts.

This year also marks the return of ‘Playback in Black’, a look at subjectively shot films with David Bryant’s real time, one-take thriller, Victims, receiving its world premiere as part of the series, which also features André Øvredal’s Troll Hunter and Costa Rican horror-comedy El Sanatorio.

Fantasia’s Korean spotlight section will present five films from first-time directors with a North American premiere for Yoon Sung-hyun’s Bleak Night and Canadian premieres for the likes of paranormal thriller Haunters, from The Good, The Bad And The Weird scriptwriter Kim Min-suk, and Kim Young-tak’s comedy Hello Ghost, which has already been picked up for an American remake.

A record 110 guests are expected to appear at this year’s festival including director Ted Kotcheff, who will present a restored 35mm print of his 1971 thriller Wake In Fright (aka Outback) and Xavier Gens, who will host a screening of his apocalyptic thriller The Divide.

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