The Kingdom

Lars von Trier built this one inside the neurosurgical wards of a Copenhagen hospital, where ordinary staff rivalries sit right alongside things that really shouldn't be happening in a place meant to heal people. It's stranger than a hospital drama has any business being, and that's exactly the appeal.

The fear here isn't the jump-out-of-your-seat kind. It creeps through lift shafts and empty corridors, the sort of dread that makes you glance twice at a closed door before you walk past it. Just when things threaten to turn properly grim, the wry humour steps back in, so you're never quite sure whether to be unsettled or amused.

Visually it has this muted, sepia hush over everything, as if an old photograph has quietly started to move. Add a strange little chorus commenting on it all from the sidelines, and you've got something that refuses to sit neatly in one genre for long.

Good for a night when you fancy your horror odd rather than obvious. Settle in, keep a light on somewhere in the flat, and let it wrongfoot you at its own unhurried pace.