Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Diagonaldi Very well executed

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

RachyLovesRattys To begin, I've always loved mind-bending and thought provoking movies (Salo, Enter the Void, Donnie Darko, Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos *haha John Waters isn't really "thought-provoking" but hey!* :P) I've been on a disturbing film kick and trying to see all of the "best" out there that I've missed- which is not many. A Serbian Film and Irreversible have been the past 2 nights features (which I enjoyed very much! Especially Irreversible)- so with all the recommendations, I decided to see Ex- Drummer. Of the 104 minutes...I'd only ask for about 80 of them back, but I WOULD ask for them back. I love foreign films and have no problem following the subtitles and getting the storyline, but this one just fell flatter than a sheet of paper for me. The "Mongoloid" song was stuck in my head admittedly. But during the last 20 minutes (by this point all my friends but one had left saying this film made no sense and they couldn't follow the plot), I found myself saying that if they just made the last moments into some bizarre heavy metal music video or something- I would have enjoyed it and found it to be very artistically pleasing. When Dries goes out on his destructive rampage and the music was playing, that's when I was finally INTO the film...sadly, it came way after I could appreciate anything. I really wanted to like this film, having heard such good things about it. I've also heard there is a book, which may be something I would enjoy more (sometimes the translation from book to film loses those little details that make the plot). I'm not giving up on this film- and perhaps would try it again sometime alone where I could really focus and check for something I've missed. But gosh, from what I experienced last night this movie just SUCKED. Really. For the first time in a long time, I'm very disappointed.

thelittleother I was really disappointed by this film. The opening 10 minutes are really impressive, and had me expecting something intelligent, angry and well-crafted. Dries is great amoral protagonist, Jan is genuinely likable and Dorpe becomes a truly tragic figure. The dialogue is mostly quite economical and the cinematography is fabulous throughout.Having Koen walk around on his ceiling is a great idea but some of the other devices are just visual gags. The "transgressive" stuff is a real mixture. There are parts that a heartbreakingly sad and awful, but a lot of it is just puerile jokes about genitals.In fact Ex Drummer is much more of a straightforward comedy than I was expecting. And the humour is mostly about (a) inappropriate use of language (gosh!), (b) a young man being attracted to an overweight, older woman (eww!), (c) outsize or unpleasant genitals (woah!). It's like Driller Killer meets The Inbetweeners. The meeting is not a success.There's a fairly explicit threesome sex scene that's only there to titillate, as far as I can see, since like Driller Killer's lesbian shower scene it adds pretty much nothing to plot or characterisation. It did, though, add to a general whiff of misogyny that I felt was hanging around the film even after you looked past the deliberate attempts to offend.The story is a bit of a mess. Without wishing to post spoiler, let's just say that it sets up a lot of tensions and possibilities that it doesn't bother to explore and ends up going for a set-piece ending that doesn't really make any dramatic sense. That's OK if you're finding the penis jokes delightful and/or edgy, but if not then it's a bit frustrating.There are some great scenes of punk bands playing punk music. There are a few really bracing moments and some quite crazy ideas. The performances were compelling (I was watching with subtitles). You get a real sense of the locations. As I've mentioned above, there are other good things here too.For me, though, the film as a whole failed to live up to its promise. Don't get me wrong, I got a kick out of it, but from some of the reviews here I was expecting little short of a masterpiece. Maybe I was expecting too much. If you sit down to it with a few beers and mates for some laughs, some gross-out and some disorganised stuff to think about I imagine it'll be fine. This might be a case of the hype spoiling the movie for me, although I genuinely think there's a more serious film here struggling to get out.

eli-ass It's always a pleasure for me just to see a film that's not coming from Hollywood and does not follow a standard scheme in either look or story. And hell yes - this film is different! Very bizarre and dives far deeper into the s--t than Hollywood would allow. But does that make the movie any good? Not for me.I don't think there are spoilers here but who knows ...The movie starts with a couple of "handicapped" guys who show up at the house of the protagonist. They are in search for a drummer to join their rock band and participate at a rock festival. The main character is a drummer and also a famous writer. He is not interested in punk music or the drums too much ... the reason he teams up with the guys is because he wants to see the extremely bad conditions they live in. These conditions couldn't be any worse. All of them live in extremely dirty run down houses. They struggle with drug addiction and other obsessions like one of them seems to be addicted to sex and at least makes the impression he could be a rapist or something. There is not too much depth to the story. It's pretty loose as we basically see the guys hanging around and sometimes preparing for the final rock show. Our drummer is always watching from a very distance. He never offers help to the poor guys rather treating them with disrespect. It seems like the only purpose to see them suffering is to feel better himself when he returns home.The movie also deals with senseless gimmicks to make the film even stranger. For example the first scenes that are completely running backwards for no reason.While I am into punk rock I didn't even like the music.When we come to a bloody ending the film tries to make some meaningful statements that for me come out of nowhere and are not build on the content (cheap content anyway) of the picture before.I really tried to believe there was more to this film - (maybe there is?) but at least I couldn't find it.3.5/10

tonymurphylee EX DRUMMER is about a group of three very sick, handicapped punks who are in a punk band, practicing to play a single concert at the battle of the bands. They recruit a famous renowned writer to be their drummer. However, once he becomes part of their group he decides to take advantage of his being higher up on the social spectrum than they are and begins to manipulate them and turn them against each other. Soon they begin to lash out at each other, but this drummer's actions soon have unexpected consequences. EX DRUMMER is an ultimately fascinating and furious piece of work. As a film, EX DRUMMER is one hell of a sick rush. I will state right now that about 95% of people who will see it will find it to be either the most disturbing film ever made or the most offensive or both. Personally, it doesn't quite reach that honor in my mind, but regardless of all that I do think that it's one of the funniest films I've seen in years and certainly one of the all time greatest black comedies. When I mean black, I mean pitch black. Blacker than coal. Black as ultimate evil. I rarely find the content that is depicted in this film to ever be funny, but this film pushes everything to such an extreme that it becomes ultimately surreal in it's humorous nature. EX DRUMMER is such an extreme, taboo breaking, and brave film that one has to feel at least appreciative of it's success in milking so much humor out of it's grotesque horror. The three main characters are sick. One beats and rapes people nonstop and has a skewed perspective as his view apparently is upside-down. His handicap is that he has a speech impediment, but who's to say that that's a real handicap? One is a homosexual who's mother is domineering and whose father is chained to his bed. He can't bend his arm due to a masturbation mishap. One is a deaf junkie who is also a wife beater and a father of a baby girl. His wife and child are both also junkies.These are the most sympathetic characters however. The real monster of the film is the drummer. The drummer is rich and lives in a wonderful condo with his wife who brings other women to bed for them to have multiple sex partners with. Aside from these people, we also have a man named "Big Dick" who's penis is extremely large and dangerous. We also have a huge cast supporting cast of freaks, degenerates, queers, and general all around scum. Imagine a combination of IRREVERSIBLE, TRAINSPOTTING, MAN BITES DOG, and DiG! and you'll have an idea as to what this film is like. This film is one of the goriest, most brutal, shocking, sexually explicit, bizarre, and gritty films I can say I've ever seen. However, it's such a fantastic and brave piece of film-making that it deserves to be admired for it's sheer reckless nature in it's extreme desires. Everyone, including black people, women, homosexuals, AND homophobic people all better beware. They might be offended by the content in this film.