Made right after the tremendous commercial success he received for his remake of The Fly, Dead Ringers remains a creative high-point in controversial Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg’s career. Cronenberg’s fixation with the grotesque side of human psyche was furthered in this intensely disturbing tale of two identical-twin brothers – the aggressive and suave Elliott and the introverted and sensitive Beverly, both renowned medical practitioners in the field of gynecology. Their radical breakthroughs in their field, however, obscure their shocking, even scandalous, personal “conquests”. However, when Beverly falls in love with an overtly promiscuous actress, his life starts falling apart courtesy clinical depression and addiction to prescription drugs; and with their eerie sense of equilibrium destroyed, it is a now matter of time before Elliott too gets sucked into the void of insanity. The movie is a relentlessly dark, brooding, unsettling and emotionally disquieting study on identity, perversity, misogyny, mental disintegration and raging madness. And at the forefront of this chilling and compelling tale of psychological terror, lies the virtuoso and devastating performance of Jeremy Irons as both the brothers, achieved through terrific use of SFX that set a benchmark for films portraying identical twins.
Director: David Cronenberg
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller
Language: English
Country: Canada
