Epidemic

The shadow of David Cronenberg's earliest body-horror films looms over Danish director/co-writer Lars von Trier's coolly self-referential, self-destructing horror picture. Screenwriters Lars (von Trier) and Niels (co-writer Niels Vorsel) are supposed to deliver their screenplay, "The Cop and the Whore," to producer Claes (Claes Kastholm Hansen) when he returns from Arizona in five days' time. But they've accidentally erased the only disc and can't recreate the story — neither even really liked it, they quickly admit. So they start work on a treatment for a horror tale called "Epidemic" and, inspired by their research into the horrors of bubonic plague, imagine a...