Dead Ringers

Director David Cronenberg handles his usual fondness for gore in muted style.

People like myself who find the character played by [Genevieve] Bujold (in one of her best performances) more interesting than either of the twins are bound to feel rather frustrated by the end.

An intense psychological drama which confronts [Cronenberg's] familiar preoccupations -- fear of physical and mental disintegration, mortality, the power struggle between the sexes -- without the paradoxical protection of visceral disgust.

Cronenberg, who has begun to emerge as a master of body-related horrific fantasy, clearly understands that a small amount of medical mischief can be more unnerving than conventional grisliness.

Dead Ringers is a stylistic tour de force, but it's cold and creepy and centered on bleak despair. It's the kind of movie where you ask people how they liked it, and they say, "Well, it was well made," and then they wince.

Really sordid stuff that becomes ridiculous, painful, unbelievable and tedious.

[David] Cronenberg created a startling film where the horror lies in the psyche: the conjoined relationship between two brothers, who share everything as if they were two parts of a whole, which pulls them both down in a spiral of madness.

As brilliantly wry as it is disturbing and arcane.

The force of superstition cast represents an accidental, perfect moment in an imperfect world. Without abandoning the clinical environment, Cronenberg draws on the myths of Janus and the miracles of the Satyricon...

Cronenberg turns this based-on-fact story into a genuine creep show.