Ember's analysis
- Pacing
- Brisk
- Intensity
- Extreme
- Complexity
- Layered
- Violence
- Graphic
- sardonic
- grotesque
- abrasive
- extreme cinema night
- arthouse film viewing
What critics said
Critics and festival juries recognized a boldly transgressive debut with striking provocation and distinctive style, while aggregate scores indicate a divided critical response.
What sets it apart
May contain story progression spoilers
Writer Dries joins the disabled musicians' band despite lacking drumming ability, treating the group as material for manipulation.
The band's disabilities, drug culture, violence, and explicit provocations are rendered through aggressively stylized art-film imagery.
The musicians pursue punk success while remaining trapped in addiction, resentment, family conflict, and the prospect of no future.
The film combines black humor with explicit sex, violence, disability-based provocation, and escalating interpersonal cruelty.
Films like Ex Drummer, and why
The Idiots
abrasive black comedy, grotesque social outsiders, and confrontational art-film stylization
Trainspotting
punk subculture, nihilistic youth energy, explicit provocation, and destructive communal behavior
Man Bites Dog
transgressive Belgian-inflected absurdism, bodily grotesquerie, and bleak comic discomfort
Movie Details
- Director
- Koen Mortier
- Release Date
- 2007-01-31
- Runtime
- 101 min
- Rating
- 6.8 / 10 (248)
Cast
- Dries Vanhegen
- Norman Baert
- Gunter Lamoot
- Sam Louwyck
- François Beukelaers
- Bernadette Damman
- Joris Van Der Speeten
- Nancy Denijs
- Nomie Visser
- Dolores Bouckaert
Common questions
- What is Ex Drummer about?
- A malicious novelist infiltrates a dysfunctional punk band and turns its desperate bid for recognition into a grotesque spiral of manipulation and ruin.
- What is Ex Drummer like to watch?
- Ember's analysis rates the pacing of Ex Drummer as brisk, its intensity as extreme and its storytelling as layered.
- Is Ex Drummer violent?
- Yes. Ember rates the violence in Ex Drummer as graphic.
- What did critics think of Ex Drummer?
- Critics and festival juries recognized a boldly transgressive debut with striking provocation and distinctive style, while aggregate scores indicate a divided critical response.
- Which films are like Ex Drummer?
- Films with a similar feel include The Idiots, Trainspotting, and Man Bites Dog.
- How long is Ex Drummer?
- Ex Drummer runs 101 minutes.
