8. Impact Event - Melancholia
Would you like a comforting titbit of information to tell the kids as you tuck them up in bed at night? Okay then: of all the thousands of asteroids, comets, meteors and the like that astronomers are following around the night sky, there are millions upon millions that we dont know about, criss-crossing through space at pant-wettingly fast speeds. And any one of these vast slugs of death could slam into our beloved earthly hell-hole without any prior warning whatsoever bestowing on us all a ghastly horrifying death. Admittedly these global risk-type catastrophes are extremely rare but still get the palpitations going enough to possibly induce a panicky seizure of some sort. Much like that titchy meteor that appeared out of nowhere and scared the bejesus out of everyone in Chelyabinsk in Russia in early 2013. And this is the basic premise of the dreamily-enthralling Melancholia by Danish fruit loop Lars Von Trier. The story itself is an exemplary parable of depressive illness, ravishingly portrayed by Kirsten Dunst as her catatonic melancholia is gradually eased by the impending comfort of a rogue planet smashing face first into Earth. Its her calm, level-headed sister played by Charlotte Gainsbourg who figuratively soils herself as the haunting blue planet approaches, all geared up to vapourise every last bugger alive. While the film is a superb meditation on mental illness and the meaning of existence, this particular doomsday situation is more terrifying than Mr & Mrs Terrifying on the most terrifying day of the year when Terrifying said to itself, Im terrifying. Its THAT chilling.