Film

Nekromantik

Name: Nekromantik
Genre: Drama, Horror
Released: 1988
Cast: Beatrice Manowski, Harald Lundt, Colloseo Schulzendorf, Volker Hauptvogel, Patricia Leipold

Horror
Strange

Nekromantik is a 72-minute provocation from director Buttgereit that treats necrophilia as the subject of an art film rather than exploitation. It's visually accomplished, genuinely unsettling, and determinedly uncommercial. For viewers interested in transgressive cinema or the boundaries of taste in horror, it's essential viewing. For most people, it should remain unviewed.

TMDb rating

2.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a transgressive, low-budget German cult film that treats its repulsion as a kind of cold, deadpan art, and you're comfortable being unsettled by its sincerity more than its shocks.

Skip it if you need a story with momentum or sympathetic characters to hold onto, since its slow, flat scenes and deliberately grim textures may feel more like an endurance test than a night out.

What it asks of you: Under seventy-five minutes, but it asks for patience with long static shots and a tone that refuses to tell you how to feel about what you're seeing.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Eraserhead1977

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Santa Sangre1989

Jodorowsky's surrealist horror-drama about trauma and family dysfunction is equally transgressive but more emotionally accessible. The visual imagination is staggering.

But It's nearly three hours and requires real patience with oblique narrative. The tone whiplashes between brutal and absurd.

Cannibal Holocaust1980

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Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Nekromantik

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Synecdoche, New York2008

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Possession1981

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The Holy Mountain1973

Another Jodorowsky: apocalyptic, surreal, packed with images that shouldn't work but do. Committed to its own weird logic in a way mainstream cinema never attempts.

But It's a two-and-a-half-hour fever dream with no conventional plot. The animal imagery will disturb many viewers on ethical grounds.

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom1976

Pasolini's final film transposes de Sade to fascist Italy as a political allegory. It's defended as art, attacked as pornography, and genuinely difficult to categorize.

But It depicts extreme sexual violence, bodily degradation, and excrement. The defense that it's political doesn't make it less graphic or any easier to watch.

The Skin I Live In2011

A modern transgressive thriller about obsession and body horror that balances genuinely disturbing content with psychological depth and strong storytelling.

But The central premise involves non-consensual violence and sexual violation. It's elegant but morally complicated in ways some viewers won't forgive.

Goodnight Mommy2015

An Austrian horror-thriller that builds dread through domestic uncanniness before pivoting into genuine transgression. The twist actually earns its bleakness.

But It's slow to pay off and the violence when it arrives is sudden and brutal. Some will find the setup too mannered to justify the payoff.

Bad Lieutenant1992

Abel Ferrara's unhinged crime-horror hybrid about spiritual corruption and bodily self-destruction. Keitel's committed performance sells the moral nihilism.

But It's incoherent by design and morally repellent throughout. The transgression can read as juvenile rather than challenging.

Come and See1985

Both are handheld, deliberately low-budget films that use graphic bodily horror not as provocation but as the unavoidable texture of their subject matter.

A Soviet war film so committed to depicting trauma that it stops being a conventional narrative and becomes a document of psychological breakdown. It doesn't exploit its violence—it documents it as consequence.

But It's relentlessly brutal without a moment of relief. Many viewers find it not just difficult but damaging to watch.

Guinea Pig Part 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood1985

Both are 70-minute interrogations of whether depicting extreme violence can be art rather than exploitation—and both leave that question deliberately unresolved.

A Japanese transgressive short that became infamous for appearing snuff-like. It's structurally minimal and genuinely difficult, yet also a technical exercise in makeup and camera work.

But It's genuinely designed to look like torture and murder. The context as art doesn't reduce the visceral revulsion, which may be precisely the point.

Guinea Pig Part 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood poster

People

Cast

Directing

Ishiro YukidoContinuity
Jörg ButtgereitDirector

Writing

Production

Jörg ButtgereitCasting
Manfred O. JelinskiProducer