spoiler warn director lars von trier and who star a himself in this mock documentary meta horror black comedy drama ( . ) and comment early on that a film should be a pebble in your shoe . with this and he may have accomplish just that . it´s an annoy mess of a movie and which try to make sense in the last scene and but by then you have be subject to ton of extraneous footage and bad dubbing and clue and a pretentious movie within a movie and also call epidemic . von trier and cowriter niels vørsel try to finish their script and convince film institute executive claes kastholm to finance their movie about a mysterious plague spread through europe and but the epidemic seem to have start in real life as well . or something . the chill giallo inspire climactic hypnosis sequence ( with real life hypnotist svend ali hamann ) be effective and but von trier´s ad hoc filmmaking style will test the viewer´s patience . he do and however and make an interesting visit to the hospital and a a sort of premonition to his late hit the kingdom 1 plus 2. udo kier appear briefly a himself . a box office disaster while well two and actually and if you count the vastly ignore re release in 1997 . ½ .