10 Great Movies Where the World Literally Ends

Now, while the end of the world can indeed be a time for romance, fooling around and black humour, nobody told Lars von Trier. The Danish director has made a career out of challenging viewing experiences, with an array of films that defy categorisation and seek to mine the darkest areas of the human body and mind. Enter Melancholia, his literal ode to depression, designed solely to make audiences feel as if we are deep in it and far from safe shores.

The planet Melancholia is on a potential collision course with Earth, engaged in a celestial dance of death, spinning into each others orbits and causing strange occurrences on the planets’ surfaces. On Earth, we follow sisters Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the former suffering from a trenchant bout of depression and a failed marriage that she self-sabotaged, and the latter attempting to contend with this while keeping her own small family unit in one piece. 

Von Trier ushers in the apocalypse in steady, alienating and yet visually arresting fashion, with the end that sees the two planets collide seeming an inevitability, and, after over two hours of pretty hardcore depression masquerading as cinema, something of a release.