Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Today’s theme: KNB!
About the Author: Parker Simpson is a writer and podcaster focusing on cult films and their social impacts. They currently cohost Where Is My Mind, a podcast focusing on underappreciated films from a variety of genres and countries. They have also held panels, chartered local organizations, and written articles to their blog. When not writing or studying, they like to spend time with their pets and go outside. Check out the podcast Linktree and blog.
Dude, I don’t know how to begin this write up. This fucking movie is so bizarre I highly recommend you watch it before reading on. It’s on Prime and Tubi. Go in cold, like nature intended.
If you’re being insolent and reading on… alright then. Doppelganger centers on Holly Gooding, a woman who moves across the country after her implication in her mother’s murder. She moves in with Patrick, a struggling writer trying to break into Hollywood. They begin a strange relationship, but Holly’s sanity increasingly comes into question as “doppelganger” commits violent acts she’s accused of.
I know this thing covers a lot of ground. It’s very cliche and riffs on many sources, ranging from Truman Capote to Brian De Palma. It also combines multiple genres: comedy, neo-noir, romance, horror, erotic thriller, it’s all there. It’s paced in a way that you wouldn’t think would be able to fit in everything, but surprise! It works, and it’s for the best most of the time.
Like all good 90s horror movies, Doppelganger throws in a heavy dose of offbeat comedy that is either hilarious or beyond annoying. You have multiple side characters that are so damn entertaining, but pushed aside to focus on the leads (more on that later). Patrick’s writing assistant is close to insufferable, yet she has fantastic one-liners that attempt to snap him back into reality. In terms of plot twists and visuals, it wants to be a De Palma movie so badly, yet it cannot shake the trends of the time. This leaves me no other choice but to place it in a special category known as camp: a film that in spite of its silliness, is seemingly aware of what it’s doing and doesn’t mind winking back to the audience (a normally hated trait of mine).
The casting of Drew Barrymore is simultaneously genius yet a terrible mistake. Holly Gooding’s struggles with mental health (that feels too kind to put here) and rough relationship with her family closely resemble Barrymore’s; I wouldn’t be shocked if this role was written with her in mind, like how Marilyn Monroe was Truman Capote’s inspiration for Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The issues are 1. Barrymore is rather young to be playing the female lead in a film with several erotic moments (including a topless shower scene) and 2. She is a charisma vacuum. I couldn’t buy her as sultry, just a weird edgy girl who needed an apartment. Pairing her with George Newbern, a frequent Superman voice actor, threw me off. Newbern, bless his heart, also has no real magnetism and is playing a wannabe screenwriter. Director/writer Avi Nesher tried channeling his best Hepburn/Peppard pairing and ended up with a mentally ill girl and dollar store Quentin Tarantino. Which isn’t terribly far from the source material, but trying to put that in an erotic thriller/horror film just doesn’t work. That being said, the clusterfuck is very fun to watch.
Where the camp comes in is found in other choices. My god, this movie looks far better than I expected. There are times you can tell it’s a soundstage with walls; other times the locations are immersive. This whole thing looks like it had a much higher budget than it likely did, a common trait of 90s B-rate horror films. Then there’s the editing… Nesher knows his pacing is quick considering most of his content is pretty mundane. How to spice it up? Quick cuts from everyone and everything! I broke my neck watching. Also, the score is insane. Too much. Too dramatic. Too anxiety inducing for regular everyday things. And yet it works. This film has no right to position itself as such a moving piece and yet it assures the audience that it is. There’s a certain nerve to be found and it’s really quite entertaining to watch.
Up to this point the reason for the season, KNB EFX has yet to be mentioned, or even considered to why it should be put in relation to the film. Hello spoilers! Go watch the movie. Please, it’s worth your time.
For most of the film, it’s just a regular thriller with flashes of grotesqueness, ranging from bloody showers to distorted reflections to a couple of murders. It’s not enough to warrant Kurtzmann, Nicotero, and Berger’s involvement, but a gig is a gig. Then the finale happens, and a gooey transformation of a singular woman into two skinless ghouls (her dual personalities) ensues, killing her psychiatrist who has taken advantage of her before morphing back. It’s the last thing you would expect from a film like this (that’s becoming a running theme here, isn’t it?).
Even before the final twenty minutes, before realizing it was a riff on Capote, before connecting Drew Barrymore’s childhood to it, I knew Doppelganger was deeply rooted in abuse, mental instability, and the loss of identity as it pertains to show business. Barrymore’s past closely mirroring the events of the film adds a subtle layer of meta, one welcome in a world pre-dating Scream’s takeover of the genre. Within that lies the dual personalities of Holly – one that acts on her violent impulses, and one that goes about her day, frightened of what the other will do next. Having developed due to her troubled childhood, she can’t form particularly healthy relationships, the most prominent being with Patrick (I believe the kids call this a situationship). The disturbing reveal that she has been taken advantage of by her psychiatrist also follows this trend. Paired with Patrick’s concurrent storyline of being a struggling writer in the entertainment industry, and a plot mixed with insecurity arises, not long before David Lynch tried his hand at similar themes. And just like my initial watches of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, I know I’ll need a few more tries to fully unpack… this.
This is definitely one of my favorite watches of the month so far. Thanks to Lance and Erica of Unsung Horrors for putting myself and many others onto this little movie last year! Glad I could finally watch it.
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