Film
Cemetery Man
A surreal Italian horror-comedy about a gravedigger who falls for a beautiful widow while dispatching the restless dead. It's deliberately weird, tonally unstable, and utterly itself—a film that treats the absurd with absolute seriousness and the serious with cheerful absurdity. For people who love cinema that doesn't apologize.
If you liked this
Braindead1992
Peter Jackson's splatter masterpiece about love and zombie hordes, equally committed to gore and genuine pathos. The deadpan Kiwi humour and elaborate practical effects create something that's both hilarious and grotesque.
But The violence is relentless and often stomach-turning. If you can't sit through a lawnmower scene, this isn't your film.

Evil Dead II1987
Sam Raimi's horror-comedy that pivots between slapstick and genuine scares. Bruce Campbell's physical performance drives it—he commits to every pratfall and possessed moment with equal intensity.
But The tonal whiplash can feel chaotic rather than clever. Some people find the constant self-aware winking exhausting.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari1920
German Expressionism at its most visually hypnotic. The distorted sets and monochromatic nightmare logic create a world where reality feels actively wrong in ways that influenced everything that followed.
But Silent film, intertitles, pacing that expects patience. The psychology is dated. It's more museum piece than thriller now.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Cemetery Man
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Seventh Seal1957
Both films treat Death as a recurring character and comedic presence. Both ask what it means to keep doing something pointless when you know the outcome is fixed.
Bergman's medieval Death playing chess against a knight contains the DNA that animates Cemetery Man—mortality as both philosophical debate and dark comedy, where death is a character with opinions and a sense of humour.
But It's pretentious arthouse cinema about mortality and faith, shot in black-and-white, with pacing that respects silence. Most people find it either a masterpiece or unbearably slow.

More like this (8)
A Nightmare on Elm Street1984
Johnny Depp's death scene alone justifies it, but the whole film crackles with invention. Freddy's cruelty has personality; the dream logic is genuinely unsettling rather than just random.
But The sequels became cartoonish and sapped the first film's reputation. It's also deeply misogynist in ways that haven't aged well.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre1974
Not what you think—sparse, sun-baked, and weirdly philosophical about civilization and family. The violence is suggested rather than explicit, which somehow makes it worse. Pure sensory nightmare.
But The fake-documentary style and grainy image feel crude now. Long stretches have almost nothing happen. People expecting gore are usually disappointed and bored.

Suspiria1977
Dario Argento's aesthetic triumph: a film where colour, sound, and architecture matter more than logic. It's a fairytale for adults, visually baroque and completely committed to its own dream-world rules.
But The plot barely exists and makes no sense. The dubbing is distracting. It's about mood and surface, which some people find empty.

The Return of the Living Dead1985
A punk-rock zombie film that's genuinely funny without winking. It treats its premise seriously—yes, the dead really are rising, yes, we're all dying—while cranking the absurdity to eleven.
But Dated 80s aesthetic and comedy that relies on shock value. The special effects are cheap-looking. The tone is uneven between satire and earnestness.

Dead Ringers1988
Cronenberg's unsettling study of obsession and male pathology, with Jeremy Irons giving two performances that bleed into each other. Deeply creepy without relying on jump scares or gore.
But Slow, clinical, and genuinely disturbing in psychological rather than visceral ways. The eroticism is cold and off-putting. It's bleak in a way that offers no catharsis.

Drag Me to Hell2009
Sam Raimi returns to horror-comedy form. It moves fast, it's visually clever, and it finds genuine scares alongside slapstick. An underrated film that understands both genres completely.
But The CGI hasn't aged gracefully. The plot is thin and mechanical. After the opening sequence, it becomes fairly predictable.

Mulholland Drive2001
Both films use non-linear storytelling and tonal chaos to suggest that meaning might be something we impose rather than discover. Both have protagonists stuck in cycles they can't escape.
Lynch's Los Angeles nightmare where reality fractures and reassembles itself. It's funny, erotic, heartbreaking, and formally wild—a film that refuses to cohere into anything sensible, which is precisely the point.
But Impenetrable plot. Graphic sexuality. Three hours that some people experience as pretentious nonsense. Lynch fans argue about what it means and never agree.

Chungking Express1994
Released the same year, both films feature protagonists unable to escape their roles or situations, using surreal imagery and tonal shifts to express romantic obsession and the experience of being stuck.
Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong romantic fever-dream, set in a neon-soaked city where love is impossible and cinema itself seems drunk. It's dizzyingly stylish but deeply sad about human connection and replacement.
But The plot is almost non-existent and deliberately scattered. It's aggressively quirky in ways that read as affected. The visual style overshadows any emotional stakes for some viewers.

People
Cast
Rupert EverettFrancesco Dellamorte
François Hadji-LazaroGnaghi
Anna FalchiShe
Mickey KnoxMarshall Straniero
Fabiana FormicaValentina Scanarotti
Clive RicheDoctor Vercesi- Katja AntonClaudio's Girlfriend
Barbara CupistiMagda
Anton AlexanderFranco
Pietro GenuardiNew Mayor Civardi
Patrizia PunzoClaudio's Mother
Stefano MasciarelliMayor Scanarotti
Directing
- Enrico GrassiAssistant Director
- Francesca MarraAssistant Director
- Julie GavrasAssistant Director
- Michele SoaviDirector
Writing
- Tiziano SclaviNovel
- Gianni RomoliWriter
Production
- Conchita AiroldiCo-Producer
- Dino Di DionisioCo-Producer
- Conchita AiroldiExecutive Producer
- Dino Di DionisioExecutive Producer
- Michèle Ray-GavrasExecutive Producer
- Gianni RomoliProducer
- Heinz BiboProducer
- Michele SoaviProducer
- Tilde CorsiProducer
- Carla BernardinUnit Manager