Possessed (Besat) (1999)

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In this slick Danish thriller, a mysterious traveler arrives at the Copenhagen airport and the city is soon thrown into darkness. When the lights are turned back on, the stranger is rushed to a hospital suffering from bizarre Ebola-like symptoms. Soren (Ole Lemmeke), an ambitious junior virologist,… More In this slick Danish thriller, a mysterious traveler arrives at the Copenhagen airport and the city is soon thrown into darkness. When the lights are turned back on, the stranger is rushed to a hospital suffering from bizarre Ebola-like symptoms. Soren (Ole Lemmeke), an ambitious junior virologist, is convinced that these symptoms portend an epidemic, and he risks his job to go to the apparent source of the disease: the backwaters of Romania. Accompanied by his medical student girlfriend (Kirsti Eline Torhaug), he searches Europe's impoverished netherworld hoping to gain the secret of the virus, and he soon becomes involved in grave-robbing and murder. Meanwhile, Interpol is pursuing occultist Vincent Monreau (played by the incomparably weird Udo Kier), who reportedly is responsible for firebombing a hospital in Bucharest and who appears to have some dark connection to the disease-stricken stranger. Monreau is convinced that the virus is of supernatural origins, presaged by the appearance of Stella Mala, a supernova supposed to appear at the beginning of Armageddon. Soon Soren's faith in reason is shattered when he is confronted by a plague that cannot be comprehended through science. In a similar vein to Lars von Trier's The Kingdom (1994), director Anders Ronnow-Klarlund uses disease as a metaphor for how the irrational and uncanny seep through the cracks of the ultra-modern societies of late 20th century Europe. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi