Epidemic

Epidemic (1987) is Lars von Trier's bleak drama-horror hybrid you can watch online on iFILM. The Danish director plays himself: when a computer glitch wipes their finished script, writers Lars and Niels have five days to improvise a new one — about a plague spreading across Europe.

The deeper the two friends dig into their invented story of a doctor who carries disease through quarantine lines, the more the sickness seeps into their actual lives. Fiction and reality stop being separate things. Udo Kier turns up in a small part, and a closing hypnosis session tips the whole film into genuine nightmare.

This is the second entry in von Trier's Europa trilogy, shot on a shoestring in coarse black and white. It won't suit everyone — cold, self-mocking, deliberately rough around the edges — yet you can already spot the filmmaker who would later make Dogville and Melancholia. A good pick for fans of early European arthouse and stories where the fiction turns on its author. Stream Epidemic (1987) online on iFILM.