Shot in black-and-white and running for more than seven hours, it is based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, whose works Tarr has frequently adapted since his 1988 film Damnation.

However, the conspiracy fails when rumors spread across the village that the charismatic and manipulative Irimiás (Mihály Vig), a former co-worker who had been presumed dead, is returning with his friend Petrina (Putyi Horváth).

Previously, Irimiás and Petrina had been forced under threat of arrest to continue their criminal enterprise in the employ of the police captain in a near-by town.

In a state of emotional tension, after reacting angrily to this, the Doctor reconsiders and naively tries to apologize as the girl leaves and disappears in the darkness.

Marauding through the woods, the girl approaches the local tavern and peers through its window, where most of the villagers dance to accordion music, unaware of the peeping child.

Irimiás tells the villagers they were all guilty of Estike's death and talks most of them into handing him all their money in order to start a new collective in a near-by estate.

The villagers (excepting the publican, Sanyi's family and the Doctor) walk together, wheeling their few belongings to a distant abandoned mansion where they lie down to sleep, whereupon the narrator describes the dreams each of them has.

As they beat him up, Irimiás arrives, scolds them for their squabbling and tells them that his plan to establish a new farm has been delayed by the authorities and that their only hope is to scatter around the country for an unspecified amount of time.

The police receive Irimiás' devastating report about the villagers' poor abilities and defects and decide to rewrite it in a less vulgar manner before filing it away and leaving.

He discovers a madman inside the ruins striking a bell clapper with a metal rod like a gong and shouting endlessly that the Turks are coming.

Frightened, the Doctor returns home and proceeds to board up the window in front of his desk, plunging himself into total darkness as he sits and writes the narration which began the film.

As with the novel upon which it is based, Sátántangó deals with strong pessimistic philosophical themes surrounding the absence of authority, the prevalence of nihilism, and the evils of indifference.

The opening shot, lasting nearly 8 minutes, depicts a vast herd of cows wandering in a desolate farm and then vanishing in the distance.

[2] Regarding the film's most prominent theme, the character of Irimiás can be seen wielding a God-like influence over the villagers to the point of convincing them of doing anything and to make himself greatly feared by them.

In "The News is They Are Coming", Futaki and Mr. Schmidt are forced to cut off their plans to escape with the money of the village's farm as a result of Mrs. Kráner telling them of the discovery of Irimiás' return.

Precisely because of their fear of him, as well as their inherent mistrust of their neighbours, they fail to see Estike in the woods outside as she first watches from a window, proceeds to cry to the Doctor for help and subsequently kills herself.

Further on, Irimiás makes use of his rhetoric to persuade the villagers to hand him all of the money they had earned at the collective farm, pledging them to the guilt of Estike's death.

In many scenes, Irimiás appears as a knowledgeable and worldly person capable of manipulating the villagers, but also fearful of people less naive, such as the Captain and, to an extent, Futaki.

The fact that the villagers are aware they have lost all prospects of stability, but are still willing to follow Irimiás due to his leadership, places him in the position of an archetypical False Prophet, with more Satanic traits to him than divine ones.

Appearing as man of culture and developed interests, the old Doctor is past the point of disillusion of his village, staying indoors most of the time and behaving introvertedly.

The Doctor seems to be deprived of the villagers' indifference; in spite of his hostile behavior towards Mrs. Kráner, he attempts to help Estike before she commits suicide and is disturbed enough to investigate the ringing of the bells in "The Circle Closes."

The twelve parts are titled as follows (in the original Hungarian and in English translation): The film is composed of long takes, a trait found frequently in Tarr's work.

As with Damnation (1988) and all of Tarr's work since 1994, Sátántangó utilizes a small set of original compositions by Víg that play at strategic points of the film, to establish connections between themes or situations.

[11] J. Hoberman of The Village Voice described it as "one of the great, largely unseeable movies of the last dozen years,"[12] and Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader has called the film his favorite of the 1990s.

[13] Susan Sontag described Sátántangó as "devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours," adding she would be "glad to see it every year for the rest of [her] life.