Nightwatch (1994)

Less a police procedural than a test of nerve. A law student takes a night watchman's job at a mortuary to pay for his studies and slowly finds himself implicated in a serial murder case. Ole Bornedal gets most of his dread from empty corridors, humming lights and cold rooms, and lets the silence do the rest. A young Nikolaj Coster-Waldau leads, with Sofie Gråbøl and Kim Bodnia alongside, so fans of The Killing and The Bridge will spot Sarah Lund and Martin Rohde years before those series. Bornedal remade it himself in English in 1997 with Ewan McGregor; the Danish original is the leaner and nastier of the two. It tips closer to horror than anything else on the list.