I’ve come to know the title sequence of Lars von Trier’s Riget well. I’ve read the subtitles enough times to know the narration to its core. I will on occasion watch it without subtitles to bask in the black. There is death in every visual – even the water seems dead. Then, those hands. Anyone raised on Romero would smile knowingly at that moment.
What happens next is perhaps the most jarring occurrence in title sequence design: this lushly cinematic sense of sheer dread is halted by spastically edited Dogme 95 footage that was shot on sub-standard video and scored to music fit for a late-in-the-episode SNL skit. All this as an introduction to one of the best television series in history.