Kritiken

Possibly his most exquisitely balanced film. It's the place to start for a novice, containing all of his most cherished themes. The preoccupation with biology, most particularly the shape and function of body cavities; the examination of the way personal identity can be permeable; the meticulous exploration of the ways substances alter perception.

With Dead Ringers, Cronenberg broke from his already trademark brand of stretchy, gooey, practical effects–aided body horror, opting instead for a more clinical approach (though he couldn't resist a dream sequence in which Claire bites into a fleshy, pulpy web conjoining the twins). Cronenberg exposes us to each incident as though we, too, are collecting data, privileging us to an uncomfortable level of character detail.

The gentleness of Cronenberg's direction subtly offsets the torrential psychological damage done by his twin sexual psychopaths. Family here is like poison, slowly released into the bloodstream.

[Cronenberg] really brought it all together here—hate to use that awful word "mature" (especially since he quickly regressed), but he genuinely seems more interested in Elliot and Beverly as complex individuals than he does in, say, the gyn(a)ecological instruments for operating on mutant women, which are merely a disturbing symptom of Bev's mental breakdown.

A tour de force... and the special effects involving both twins simultaneously are so well handled that one quickly forgets about the underlying illusion. But the sheer unpleasantness of the plot, inspired by a real-life case, guarantees that this isn't a film for everyone, and people like myself who find the character played by Bujold (in one of her best performances) more interesting than either of the twins are bound to feel rather frustrated by the end.