The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A doppelganger is a duplicate of a person. This is usually created by a supernatural process and should be differentiated from a Twin, a naturally born genetic sibling, or a Clone, which is an artificial genetic copy of an individual.
Beginning with The Student of Prague (1913), genre cinema has created numerous examples of doppelgangers that most often appear by means that are left unexplained. They wreak havoc with the confusion and mischief they create as they seek to steal or corrupt the life of an individual.
In Body Snatchers films, they are aliens that have come to steal human bodies replicating everything except the emotions. In other works, doppelgangers will emerge from mirrors, Other Dimensions or Alternate Timelines.
Spanish film about a woman travelling to her family home on the Russian steppes that creates a very haunted atmosphere. On the other hand, the twist ending has borrowed too much M. Night Shyamalan
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
Alex Garland’s second directorial effort after Ex Machina. Clearly influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, this features a group venturing into an alien-affected zone where Garland does a fine job of creating a sense of the otherworldly
An indie hit starring/co-written by Brit Marling that is a well-played mumblecore drama about redemption and loneliness. On the other hand, the central premise of a mirror Earth is preposterous science-fiction
2013 brought a spate of doppelganger films. This was overshadowed by the more high-profile Enemy and The Double. Here Sophie Turner plays a schoolgirl who finds her life being overtaken by a mysterious double
In a similar vein to James Wan’s Malignant, a film with a heroine who has a malignant twin force its way out of a wound in her side and proceed to take over her life
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell make their third Evil Dead film. The series hit a peak with the delirious balance of horror and comedy in the second film but here the comedy over-balances and becomes too broad
The first of the live-action films based on the famous comic-books set during the Roman period, starring Gerard Depardieu who seems born to play the part of Obelix
Someone figured out Adam West and Burt Ward, Batman and Robin from the 1960s Batman tv series, were still around and put them in this animated film that replicates the look of the show and pays homage to its willful silliness
Parody of the horror genre designed to highlight British comedian Kenny Everett. Some quite funny spoofs, some that aren’t. Vincent Price appears as the leader of a coven.
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
Abel Ferrara’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an overlooked film that settles in with an undeniable creepiness that is just as effective as the earlier versions. The metaphor for the pod people is more diffuse in this one but that does not mitigate the film’s effect
Rodrigo Gudiño, editor of Rue Morgue magazine, directs a horror film with strong Lovecraftian overtones about a portal opened at a mysterious cabin in the woods
Variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers with body-snatching doppelgangers emerging from mirrors. Directed with an impressive air of subtle, brooding disquiet, this manages to run up some reasonable twists on an oft-told tale
Ben Wheatley has gained a cult following in recent years with films like Kill List and High Rise. Here he sets out to make a deliberately low-tech multiverse film that becomes a real head-scratcher
This comes with the intriguingly original premise where Madeline Brewer is a camgirl performer on an adult site who finds that her life has been hijacked by a doppelganger
Fascinating conceptual SF film about a dinner party where people find they are dealing with multiple alternate versions of themselves where minute choices have been made differently. The film twists and turns into an immensely satisfyingly pretzel
George Romero’s adaptation of a Stephen King novel with writer Timothy Hutton haunted by an evil alter ego. Underrated and quite possibly the King adaptation that is the most faithful to its source material
This was one of the last gasps of the 1950s alien body snatchers genre. Conducted on a low budget, this nevertheless comes with some modest effect as a scientist and his family face mysterious doppelgangers
An off-the-wall film with a unique premise about an apartment where every time somebody is killed another copy of them emerges out of a hole in the wall
Multi-director anthology about a series of mysterious portals that appear around the world, this creates a sense of something genuinely alien and otherworldly
Horror film in which Drew Barrymore is haunted by a doppelganger. Before allowing the film to collapse into incomprehensibility, director Avi Nesher creates some fascinatingly weird images
Socially inept Jesse Eisenberg encounters a charming doppelganger that takes over his life. Richard Ayoade adapts a Dostoevsky novella but for some reason transplants it into a blackly comic dystopia
Denis Villeneuve slips into a very Cronenbergian vein to deliver a film about Jake Gyllenhaal and a mysterious doppelganger. A fascinatingly oblique and cryptic work, just as long as one does not require that it comes with any easy explanations
Michael Almereyda conducts a unique take on the mummy film dispensing with all the cliches in the eerie story of a Druidic mummy unearthed from an Irish peat bog
A film made by a 17 year-old from Norway. This has more ideas – mystery mass disappearances, doppelgangers from alternate timelines – than it is capable of coherently relaying
The story of the drug-addicted heir Andrew Getty determined to be a filmmaker is almost as fascinating as the one film he made before his death. The film is an extraordinary work, filled with jaw-dropping surrealistic imagery
Guy Maddin has perfected a blend of silent movie stylistics and hilariously surreal melodrama. This is a Guy Maddin film on acid, a sumptuously madcap fantasia of visuals wound around a tapestry of tall tales
An early effort from Hammer Films and director Terence Fisher. Rather than the florid Gothic that Hammer and Fisher would discover four years later, this is a film with one foot in the mad science genre of the 1940s about the invention of a matter duplication machine
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
A fascinatingly creepy Finnish film in which a young girl adopts and bonds with a grotesque bird-like creature, which proves murderous at the same time as it starts to become more human-like
An Irish film that creates quite a reasonable degree of atmosphere in its story of a mother who believes her son has been replaced by something else
Another of the Amicus horror anthologies from a series of stories by Robert Bloch. An okay effort, mostly being remembered for Jon Pertwee’s turn as a comic vampire
An hilarious black comedy written with a biting savagery where advertising executive Richard E. Grant has his life taken over by a ruthless boil on his shoulder
Nicely made seasonal tv movie where cynical Ally Walker has her life turned around by the appearance of her childhood self (Hayden Panettiere)
The finest film to come out of 1950s SF cinema, concerning an invasion of pods that replicate people but for their emotions. The sense of paranoia and psychological tension is unsurpassed
An excellent remake of the Cold War classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original has now been smartly retooled for the 1970s and slots right into the Me Generation era with paranoia perfectly intact
This was one of the first US films to depict the future. It is essentially Metropolis having been remade as a Broadway musical with an emphasis on comedy
Likeable and appealing Disney film in which Bruce Willis is an asshole executive who suddenly finds a kid in his apartment who turns out to be his nerdier boyhood self
Yorgos Lanthimos has become a critically celebrated name in recent years. Here he has made an anthology of three surreal tales that come in his customary black deadpan
Lars von Trier returns to finish off his haunted hospital saga The Kingdom after a 25 years absence, despite the death of several principals, and again milks the same darkly hilarious vein
Another of the DC Original Animated Movies. This deals with both the Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl, bringing them together in a mutual adventure
A pre-James Bond Roger Moore plays a mild-mannered businessman who finds his life overrun by a malevolent doppelganger
Group of young people get away to a smarthome for the weekend, which then tries to kill them. The most ridiculous amongst a mini-spate of films about smarthome A.I.’s
There have been some very sophisticated time paradox films in recent years. At complete contrast, this is a comedy that has a great deal of fun with the premise of a guy and assorted temporal copies of himself running about
Melies Cinemagician is a special screening of a selection of films from Georges Melies presented by Vancouver’s Vancity Theater to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. The show was a live performance involving a score composed especially for the event, displays of conjuring tricks and a magic lantern show. The same year also saw […]
A ridiculously melodramatic Catholic historical drama wherein a statue of the Virgin Mary comes to life to take the place of a nun so she can run off and woo a young Roger Moore … A lushly made canvas but otherwise absurdly overwrought piety
Promising idea of an alternate world-hopping film from James Wong, this spends too much time copying moves from The Matrix and lets most of its possibilities pass by
Going by the title you could easily dismiss this as an indie relationship drama (as I initially did) but what we instead get is a fascinatingly cryptic doppelganger film where a couple go on a retreat only to encounter idealised versions of themselves who seem intent on stealing their lives
Nacho Vigalondo scripted film that seems like a mix between a girls’ boarding school story and an SF film like The Island, all directed with amazingly over-ornamented costuming and design scheme not seen on screen since at least The Cell
From Isaac Ezban in his English-language debut, a cleverly and pleasingly contorted film where a group of friends discover a mirror that leads to a parallel timeline
A variation on the multiverse film where Danielle Deadwyler enters a forest portal and returns to realities where the details of her life vary in minute but increasingly alarming ways
This has the intriguing idea of two Demi Moore’s living on either side of the world, each dreaming that they are the other but the premise pans out as no more than a routine Chick Flick
The directorial debut of Satoshi Kon, overseen by Katsuhiro Otomo, an anime concerning a troubled Japanese pop singer being cyber-stalked by a doppelganger
An interesting and unusual film where teens attending a house party find that it has been invaded by doppelgangers of themselves who are taking over their lives
Christopher Nolan directs a beautiful period piece with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival Victorian stage magicians. The film is an elegantly crafted Hall of Mirrors and illusions, capped by sterling performances from all involved
Unknown, no-name film that proves an unexpected surprise. Three friends go camping on an island are are stalked by cloned doppelgangers of themselves. Economically constructed, full of twists and undercurrents and a fine set of double performances
A strong and intelligent multiverse film filled with some great twists where a woman travels across multiple worlds to track down and kill different versions of the man who murdered her daughter
Alien scripter Dan O’Bannon jumps aboard the 80s/early 90s fad for H.P. Lovecraft adaptations is this directorial outing that eventually develops quite reasonable effect
A comedy variant on android/A.I. themes where two people use robot doubles for romantic subterfuge only for the two androids to elope together
The first of two sequels to The Santa Clause with Tim Allen as Santa Claus, this benefits from a bigger budget
An alien body snatchers film conducted with a series of smart whiplash twists and turns – even surprisingly a sense of humour
Isaac Ezban makes another conceptually out there film about people trapped in a bus station who all start transforming into the likeness of the same man. Much has been modelled on The Twilight Zone and this has a fascinating weirdness
Called the Russian 2001. Andrei Tarkovsky makes one of the great SF films, a haunting ghost story set on a space station as an alien planet below drives the crew mad with recreated doppelgangers of their loved ones
Steven Soderbergh’s English-language remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s epic SF film. Soderbergh trims Tarkovsky’s long-windedness and makes the plot tighter, more intimate but this still emerges as a lesser version than the original
Classic German silent film where a man sells his shadow, which then becomes a malevolent doppelganger that torments his life
A classic of the German Expressionist era about a poor student who sells his shadow to The Devil, only to have it become a malevolent doppelganger. As with much of the work to emerge from this era, the film manages directorial effects that still look amazing today
An absurdly over-the-top film where aging Demi Moore takes a serum that turns her into a youthful Margaret Qualley. A ridiculous film that for some reason did well at awards season
The nadir of the Christopher Reeve Superman films, one where the desire to add a comedy element in the form of Richard Pryor overtakes and wrecks what is already a random and unfocused plot
Trilogy of Edgar Allan Poe tales from three European directors. Roger Vadim’s opening episode drags but both Louis Malle and Federico Fellini deliver standout works in their respective segments
John Boorman makes a film where Brendan Gleeson has his life taken over by a doppelganger
Winner of this year Cannes Palme d’Or, this is a Thai ghost story .where director Apichatpong Weerasethaku creates an intensely haunted atmosphere at times, although the film itself remains vague and elusive in terms of plot
Jordan Peele’s follow-up to the massive hit of Get Out. This is a doppelganger film where the metaphors that Peele is trying to make are not entirely clear but what you cannot deny is that he demonstrates considerable assurance as a genre director
Third of the V/H/S films, all horror anthologies in the Found Footage style. While the other two were fairly hit and miss, this is extremely good. Each of the four stories sits among the very best episodes among the current crop of multi-director horror anthologies
An early film from legendary B movie producer/director Roger Corman. This is an alien invasion film but has been twisted out of shape to exploit the fascination with satellites after the launch of Sputnik several months before the film came out