Amidst the avalanche of franchise sequels and campy B-movies that seemed to dominate horror in 1988, a handful of horror’s big names were releasing some of their most experimental work. Wes Craven took a side-step into Haitian zombie lore with The Serpent & the Rainbow and a new franchise emerged, with Hellbound: Hellraiser II, offering a complicated continuation of Clive Barker’s S&M-infused horror realm. The relative box-office safety of slasher sequels was mirrored by a swan dive into unknown territory. Into this alternative horror canon entered David Cronenberg, god of all that is gory, with his most cerebral effort yet, 1988’s Dead Ringers.
Dead Ringers is a Freudian minefield, following twin gynaecologists Elliott and Beverly Mantle (both played by Jeremy Irons) as they maneuver a shared life, subbing in for each other both personally and professionally whenever it is convenient, with little thought of any potential consequences. The twins share everything – a career, an apartment, and even women, many of whom are patients at their fertility clinic.
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Their dynamic is so well-oiled and efficient that by time we meet them through Cronenberg’s distant, almost clinical lens, the film feels practically voyeuristic. Providing a peek behind the curtain at the disquieting functionality of such dysfunctional people. The Mantles use each other for their own self-enrichment and their own self-destruction. Knotted together so tightly that, as their shared lover, Claire, tells Beverly, “I think you two have never come to terms with the way it really does work between you”.
With a premise like this, it’s understandable that Jeremy Irons’ performance is the most widely remembered part of the film. Irons stitches together a compelling portrait as both twins, playing Elliott as a confident, brash womaniser, and Beverly, as his quiet, needy counterpart. A different actor might have focused on distinction, on highlighting those subtle nuances that make each twin unique, but Irons takes a far more complex approach, blending Elliott and Beverly beyond recognition.
In the opening scenes, each brother is distinct, if a bit archetypal, but as their story unfolds the real magic of Irons’ performance begins to take shape. His performance twists around itself like vines, curling backward and distorting until it becomes clear that the Mantles are not two people: they are two versions of the same person. In Irons’ masterful hands, Elliott and Beverly refuse to be anything so simplistic as co-dependents or sibling rivals, but instead each similarity and difference is merely an organic outgrowth of the other, the same note in a different key.
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This deft blending isn’t just limited to Irons’ performance. Every element of Cronenberg’s film is committed to finding the boundaries between states and watching the chaos unleashed when the Mantles’ numerous careful balances are upended. Everything from the personal and professional, the familial and the sexual, and even art and science are pushed to their limits, forced to merge in ways that are equally thrilling and unsettling.
The result is a film so controversial that it’s unsurprising that it’s still remembered today as among Cronenberg’s most radical. Even within the evolution of Cronenberg’s career, Dead Ringers occupies an uneasy middle-ground, marking the transition from the director’s more attention-grabbing body-horror roots in films like The Fly and The Brood to his more sober, cerebral offerings in the 1990s and 2000s.
To put it simply, they just don’t make movies like this one anymore. In the 21st-century, films as thorny and problematic as Dead Ringers rarely make it through to the mainstream, often sanitised or moralised beyond recognition. Cronenberg embraces the melodrama of 1988 horror, but instead of adopting a self-effacing or humorous tone, he tackles his baroque subject matter head-on. For example, such blatant misogyny might appear in newer films to be caricatured or vilified, but rarely to be interrogated so sincerely and thoroughly for what it is – the absolute terror and hatred of women.
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Dead Ringers is a film that embraces its own chaos, absurdity, and complexity, and within that, finds a liminal space so unsettling that even decades later, there are still layers upon layers to unpick. In contrast to the moralistic, campy slasher tales that were its contemporaries, and even the more straightforward narratives of Cronenberg’s own early career, Dead Ringers refuses to offer any easy answers to the questions it raises. Instead, Cronenberg forces audiences to simply dwell in that uncomfortable between-space, between art and science, between bodies, and watch in horror as that space expands, contracts, and swallows the Mantle brothers.
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Dead Ringers is certainly a transitional film for Cronenberg, and arguably the point where DC alienated a section of his fanbase by all but ditching the horror aesthetic of his formative films. Here the horror is externalised into personality disintegration, addiction and ultimately madness, which while being consistent with many a DC protagonist like Max Renn, Johnny Smith and Seth Brudle, also marks the point where the psychology of Cronenberg’s characters becomes the focal point. Still one of my favourite DC films, there’s a tragedy to Dead Ringers that is never quite matched again in a Cronenberg film: two little lost boys masquerading as men, unable to live without the other, for whom personal happiness and fulfilment is a narrowing spiral into onanism and self-destruction. Irons’ performance(s) are heartbreaking, but Genevieve Bujold is equally good in a role that could’ve ended up being maudlin and unlikeable.