Overview
A darkly comedic exploration of obsession and the grotesque, spanning generations of peculiar men.
Ember's analysis
- Pacing
- Brisk
- Intensity
- Extreme
- Complexity
- Layered
- Violence
- Graphic
- surreal
- visceral
- disturbing
- cult film night
- avant-garde cinema marathon
What critics said
Critics broadly praised the film as surreal, visually striking, imaginative, and witty despite its graphic and divisive subject matter.
What sets it apart
May contain story progression spoilers
The film follows three generations of men whose lives form distinct but connected chapters centered on desire, appetite, and bodily transformation.
Sexual compulsion, competitive eating, obesity, mutilation, and taxidermy turn the body into a vehicle for satire and philosophical inquiry.
The film’s striking imagery of flesh, appetite, anatomical transformation, and embalming gives its horror an elaborate art-film design.
The successive generations reflect changing Hungarian and Eastern European social realities, including wartime and Cold War contexts, through absurd bodily rituals.
Films like Taxidermia, and why
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
surreal body horror, grotesque satire, and formally audacious treatment of corporeality
The Pillow Book
provocative art horror, visceral transformation, and disturbing black humor
Society
darkly comic grotesquerie, extreme physical imagery, and unconventional family dynamics
The Cremator
surrealist European body cinema, taboo subject matter, and unsettling visual invention
Movie Details
- Director
- György Pálfi
- Release Date
- 2006-08-23
- Runtime
- 94 min
- Rating
- 6.6 / 10 (363)
Cast
- Csaba Czene
- Gergely Trócsányi
- Marc Bischoff
- István Gyuricza
- Piroska Molnár
- Gábor Máté
- Géza D. Hegedűs
- István Hunyadkürthy
- Zoltán Koppány
- Adél Stanczel
Where to watch in United States
- Streaming
- Here TV, Here TV Amazon Channel
Streaming options come from TMDB and change over time.
Common questions
- What is Taxidermia about?
- Three generations of Hungarian men pursue impossible forms of satisfaction as desire, appetite, and death mutate into a surreal grotesque family chronicle.
- What is Taxidermia like to watch?
- Ember's analysis rates the pacing of Taxidermia as brisk, its intensity as extreme and its storytelling as layered.
- Is Taxidermia violent?
- Yes. Ember rates the violence in Taxidermia as graphic.
- What did critics think of Taxidermia?
- Critics broadly praised the film as surreal, visually striking, imaginative, and witty despite its graphic and divisive subject matter.
- Which films are like Taxidermia?
- Films with a similar feel include The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, The Pillow Book, Society, and The Cremator.
- How long is Taxidermia?
- Taxidermia runs 94 minutes.
- Where can I watch Taxidermia?
- In United States, Taxidermia streams on Here TV, Here TV Amazon Channel.
