By Keri O’Shea
It’s perhaps something of a surprise that there’s a sequel to one of the most notorious horror flicks of the 80s, but nonetheless, after a hiatus of a few years, during which interim director Jörg Buttgereit made Der Todesking (another deeply morbid piece of work), Nekromantik got a second chapter. In fact, we start where we left off, with the anguished main character of the first film, Rob, in his death throes – with the film flitting from a sombre black and white right back into lurid colour as he dies on screen, again. So much for him, you might think, but it ain’t over yet. After all – what could be more fitting, for a man of Rob’s tastes, than to be dug back up and given the same treatment he and his erstwhile girlfriend Betty gave to the dead? Before we see that she’s armed with the tools for the job, we might be able to guess that the young woman entering the cemetery (Monika M.) isn’t just there to leave flowers. She digs Rob up, and – somehow – takes him back to her own apartment. There’s no wire around the bed this time, but nurse Monika’s unusual predilections are quite clear, given her decor…
So far, so familiar, but despite being another exploration of a person who is respectable enough by day yet has the sort of secret sexual mores that would get you locked up, Nekromantik 2 is quite different in the way it plays out. In the first film, we have a relationship (between Betty and Rob) which is seemingly all pinned on her aberrant tastes, and his success – or failure – to please her. It is Betty’s exit which precipitates the worst of Rob’s excesses afterwards. In the sequel however, Monika’s struggle is between her obviously unorthodox desire for the dead, and her new (living) boyfriend Mark (Mark Reeder), a man she seems rather fond of. Much of the film follows their developing romance; as things progress, Monika finds it more and more difficult to stop her nefarious activities spilling over into everyday life. It’s by no means a dialogue-heavy venture, this film, nor is it a character study in any conventional sense, but it’s definitely far more about the inner life of a young woman who seems, to all intents and purposes, respectable. There’s a broader sense of place and time here, perhaps because Buttgereit knew he’d achieved a lot of the shocks possible via the subject matter in the first film – so that it made sense to explore things differently.
Of course, this is still a film about necrophilia, and it’s still a Buttgereit movie. We have ample material which repels and disturbs here, perhaps even more so in places than in the first film. As such, these films are never going to be for everybody, and I’d add that they’ll not be to the tastes of most horror fans either (I commented during my review of Nekromantik that I have no wish to see real-life footage of animal slaughter in horror cinema and that is equally true here, where it occurs again – even if I understand why it’s there). This certainly isn’t Weekend at Bernies with some boobs thrown in. That unseemly vibe from the first film is definitely present and correct here, then, alongside the lo-fi appearance which looks part illicit footage, part home movie, and practical effects which are simple, but very good: Rob ‘past his best’ is a horrible thing to look at, for example, and yet a lot of that is via the simple fact of the flesh appearing wet, clammy. Many of the scenes in Nekromantik 2 are grisly, unconventional and protracted along these lines; the soundscape is hectic and the overall feel of the film is unpleasant. Add to that some exceedingly outré sequences, such as the art film which consists of naked people talking ornithology, and you may find yourself asking a few questions at the end. As I say, these films are never going to appeal to everyone; it would be a strange world if they did.
For all that, I did find Nekromantik 2 a compelling watch and in many ways, it’s a striking piece of indie cinema, very much part of a scene where you made up your own rules and found your own ways of achieving what you wanted to achieve. I probably wouldn’t put it on if I wanted to feel better about the world, but it’s a worthwhile continuation of a strange, challenging sequence of films nonetheless. This Arrow release is loaded with extra features, too, many of which shed new light on the making of the film and would certainly be of interest to the more dedicated viewer…
Nekromantik 2 is available from Arrow Films now.