Ex Drummer

Ex Drummer (2007) is a pitch-black Belgian drama sitting somewhere between crime and cruel comedy, available to watch online on iFILM. It's the feature debut of Koen Mortier, drawn from a novel by Flemish writer Herman Brusselmans. Three misfit musicians from a grim coastal town want to start a band, and each is held back by his own disability. They need a drummer. So they recruit a famous author who has never touched a kit.

The writer, Dries, says yes — though not for the music. He treats the trio like lab specimens: a deaf guitarist, a tone-deaf singer, a bassist with a dead arm and a nightmare for a home life. Dries looks down on all of them and quietly pulls apart lives that were already coming undone. The band stumbles into success, and everything around it slides into violence, filth and self-destruction.

Mortier films with no anesthetic — the mockery, sex, blood and bottom-rung squalor land head-on, punctuated by tricks like upside-down gravity. This is not gentle viewing and not a cozy night in; it's a provocation some people curse and others wear like a cult badge of European extremity. If you go for harsh, uncomfortable arthouse with no moral tucked in its pocket, stream Ex Drummer (2007) online on iFILM.