Epidemic

For his second theatrical film, Lars von Trier made one of those movie-within-a-movie things. Part of the film borders on documentary as von Trier himself plays a filmmaker in the process of making one film, but soon he abandons the idea and decides to make a horror film about a deadly epidemic set loose in Europe which begins to wipe out the continent. The other part of the film is the film "Epidemic". It's an interesting experiment aided by the ultra grainy and hight contrast 16mm black and white photography which reminds one of David Lynch's Eraserhead. He sticks the title in red letters in the top-left corner of the screen as a permanent watermark throughout the entire film, as if we are watching a top secret file documenting the end of Europe as we know it. Parts of the film are interesting, and von Trier continues to explore his theory of film as hypnosis, but a lot of it is dull. It is, however, an often fascinating experiment which works well as a mood piece.