The Kingdom

Long before his bout of foot-in-mouth disease at Cannes, Danish auteur Lars Von Trier spooked everyone with a shamelessly weird miniseries set in a modern day hospital that becomes a gateway to the spirit world. It was followed by a sequel and now all eight episodes are collected in one boxed set. Nearly twenty years on, there's still never been anything like it.

Office politics sit uneasily alongside nightmarish imagery of cannibalism, murderous ghosts, tumour obsessed surgeons, and freakishly deformed babies while a nameless evil gathers strength in the shadows. It has more in common with Eraserhead than E.R., and Von Trier is in on the joke. Despite the overt horror elements, there's also a healthy dose of humour and the interplay between the quirky and often completely ridiculous characters makes for compulsive viewing. Something so deliberately offbeat isn't going to be for everyone, but approached with an open mind it's an essential and utterly unique masterpiece of the macabre. [Scotty McKellar]