Mikael Åke Persbrandt in The Kingdom: Exodus (2022)
Horror-comedies are difficult to pull off and even harder to excel at, but the first two seasons of Lars von Trier’s TV series Riget (The Kingdom) dished out laughs and chills aplenty, with some deranged body horror moments in the mix. Just listen to Joachim Holbek’s theme song, a jaunty earworm with a demented rhythm and demonic vocals. Part parody of daytime hospital drama, part satanic horror, the Danish show premiered in 1994, with a second four-episode season released three years later, achieving cult status and spawning an American remake produced by legendary horror novelist Stephen King. Now, some 25 years later, the Danish enfant terrible (no longer so enfant) has returned to the hospital built on the old bleaching ponds for a five-episode conclusion of the saga.
The new season starts with the end of the last episode – literally, from the end titles, as an old DVD of the TV show comes to a close. Elderly superfan and sleepwalker Karen Svensson (Bodil Jørgensen) is not happy. “What kind of ending was that!” she harrumphs. No sooner does she go to bed than she sleepwalks (and then sleep-hails-a-cab) to the rebuilt hospital, where a bored porter complains that the idiot von Trier’s show has ruined the hospital’s reputation.
It’s true that Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet – nicknamed Riget – has changed, modernised with large revolving doors and shiny wards; one of the dishwashers that served in the first two seasons as a chorus to the goings-on has been replaced by a robot. But fact and fiction blur. Helmer Jr (Mikael Åke Persbrandt), the son of the bad-tempered Swedish surgeon from the earlier seasons, arrives via helicopter to take up his position as co-head of the ward with Pontopidan (Lars Mikkelsen), with the intention of finding out what drove his father insane. In between staff meetings, operations and medical conferences – “pain is your friend,” one doctor announces – Karen and a porter called Balder (Nicolas Bro) attempt to locate the spirits and the portal that will take them back to the afterlife. But it’s not going to be easy. Satan (Willem Dafoe) prowls the corridors in a white coat with a red right hand, and soon he and his devotees are ranged against the forces of good.
Von Trier and his team, including co-writer Niels Vørsel, manage the balance of providing fans of the original with a sense of continuity and creating a new season so madly entertaining that it really doesn’t matter what went on before. It moves with its own demonic logic, and the eccentricities of the characters allow for so many surprises and twists that there is more fun in being lost than in finding your way. Much of the comedy derives from the exaggerated enmity between Sweden and Denmark, with the Volvo-driving, IKEA-loving Helmer Jr attending a group called Swedes Anonymous, whose members gather in the basement and moan about working in Denmark. (“Damned Danes!” is the show’s equivalent to Twin Peaks’s “damn fine coffee”.) Another new character is Naver (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a neurosurgeon with anger issues, who, once enraged, threatens to scoop out his own eye with a spoon. Von Trier, the arch-provocateur, is present and incorrect, deploying Nazi jokes and a running gag involving a lawyer (Alexander Skarsgård) acting for both the victim and the accused in a sexual harassment case. It’s not funny because it’s true; it’s funny because it’s so very wrong.
The production values are a notable step-up from the original series, with some impressive visual effects, but in some ways von Trier maintains the lo-fi charm of the original, imbuing the low-resolution camerawork with a yellow tint, the colour of a urine sample. The editing is choppy, giving the action the spontaneity of a workplace documentary. With The Kingdom: Exodus, von Trier has achieved something analogous to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), at once faithful to his preceding work and surpassing its confines to move into broader, more ambitious territories. Von Trier even allows himself a delicious cameo, as though autographing his diabolical creation with an audacious blood-red flourish. Whatever you think of von Trier – and he certainly has issues – it is undeniable that he has produced a substantial body of work that infuriates and amazes but is never boring. With this latest season, the Kingdom series still stands as his most purely entertaining work.
► The Kingdom Exodus is part of the Cult strand at the 2022 London Film Festival; it is screening on 13 and 15 October.