The Kingdom defies categorization. This cult Danish miniseries plays like a nightmarish cross between Twin Peaks and Chicago Hope as directed by David Cronenberg, and even that hardly captures the giddy absurdity of Lars von Trier's soap-opera-cum-horror-tale. The setting is a modern hospital built on a medieval graveyard, but the most terrifying ghosts belong not to ancient history but rather to the hospital's own dark past. An egotistical, self-righteous visiting Swedish doctor, who abhors the Danes and screams his outrage in nightly rants from the hospital roof, presides over this ensemble of eccentrics; but he's hardly the strangest this hospital has to offer. ER has nothing on this delirious madhouse, where haunted ambulances, a Masonic cult, a devil cabal, demons, ghosts, and a most mysterious pregnancy lurk in the fringes of more earthly (though equally bizarre) melodramas. Shooting in video with a bobbing handheld camera, von Trier creates an otherworldly atmosphere with the dimly lit corridors and bland, drained color schemes, set to an eerily sparse soundtrack of echoing hospital sounds and electronic wailings. The mix of deadpan hysteria and spooky ghost story concludes with the most outrageous cliffhanger put on film (to be continued in The Kingdom II). (The home video also includes closing comments by a smiling von Trier himself, unseen in the theatrical version.) Simply put, you've never seen anything quite like this. --Sean Axmaker
2.
Director Lars von Trier puts his mischievous mind to work once again, this time creating a bizarre, humorous, and suspenseful tale about a Danish hospital that is haunted by ancient spirits. Copenhagen's largest hospital is nicknamed the Kingdom, and there are many odd things happening inside of it. The strange members of the medical staff have to contend with not only such heinous matters as murder and malpractice but also occurrences linked to the occult and the supernatural. When a hypochondriac patient--who also happens to be the mother of one of the staff’s employees--begins to see the ghost of a young girl who is trying to tell her something, she unsuccessfully tries to convince the staff that she isn’t delusional. It isn't until each individual begins to experience mysterious episodes for themselves that the Kingdom starts to collapse. And when a female doctor becomes pregnant, the fetus’s alarming growth rate forces her to give birth prematurely, bringing the spirits to life. Filmed for Danish television in four separate hour-long episodes--"The Unheavenly Host," "Thy Kingdom Come," "The Living Dead," and "A Foreign Body"--von Trier’s quirky drama builds in tension up to its shocking finale.
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