Ranking Every Lars Von Trier Film Worst To Best

14. Epidemic (1987)

The second installment in von Trier's Europa Trilogy, Epidemic serves as a meta art-house horror film split into five segments. Von Trier and co-writer Niels Vorsel play themselves, battling to create a script for their next project. The bulk of the film focuses on the pair as they write their screenplay over an 18 month period; the rest of the film is intercut with scenes from their work-in-progress, a horror yarn about a doctor (also played by von Trier) trying to cure a violent epidemic.

This being a von Trier film, even an early one, Epidemic is an increasingly strange and disturbing vision, which becomes more twisted and surreal as the story wears on. The main issue is the plot, which, whilst inventive, meanders through the majority of the runtime until its deeply unsettling final moments.

Epidemic is vintage von Trier, but isn't nearly as well-drawn as his other projects.