‘Enemy’ is a Film People Need to Hear About (Review)

Written by: David Beers

First, this isn’t a typical horror movie. I wasn’t even expecting to be able to write a review for it. Then I watched it, kind of lost my mind for a few hours, and decided other people needed to hear about it.

The last scene of the movie has been described as perhaps the scariest ending ever. I think there’s something to that. But let’s get down to the business we came here for first.

I’m going to be completely honest up front. I had to read/research for an hour after this film to understand what happened. The movie starts out normal enough, or as normal as something this weird can. Jake Gyllenhaal (what an abnormal way to spell that name, right?) is a professor who teaches about government oppression. We see early on that his life is repetitive to the point of monotonous. He teaches, goes to a dark apartment, has sex with his girlfriend, and repeats this over and over and over.

Then something random happens.

A man at school, out of nowhere, recommends he watches a film. So, Gyllenhaal does. In the film, he finds someone that looks exactly like him.

The movie proceeds from here, in which Gyllenhaal tries to find his body double, in which the body double and he meet, and then things begin to get really weird.  As the characters interact, reality begins to break apart. The characters overt motivations begin to not make sense. A vague sense of the surreal permeates the movie, but you’re unable to turn away, because all this weirdness has to be leading to something. It is. Although you won’t understand, it’s definitely leading to something epic.

Also, I’m a believer in Gyllenhaal after this. I’ve seen him in quite a lot, but he shines here in a way that most actors couldn’t. The personality that he brings to the different characters, which are basically body doubles, deserves an Oscar. You’re watching one of the greatest actors of our generation, Broke Back Mountain and all.

I want to be clear, this isn’t a horror movie even in the lines of The Shining—in which much of the terror is watching the main character morph into a monster, but with little violence. This is a horror movie in which you have absolutely no idea what will happen, nor, what is actually happening at any given moment. You think you do, as you’re watching it. You’ll be saying, yeah, I get this—I know why Jake is doing such and such. Trust me. You. Don’t. Understand.  It was hard to understand every bit of Inception because of the different layers. This isn’t like that. At all. In the movie Enemy, reality isn’t what you see; reality isn’t what the characters see. Reality is this multi-layered focus on detail that the director has created and Gyllenhaal acts out perfectly.

This movie receives 5/5 stars based simply on the director’s audacious vision for this movie, and somehow believing that the idiocy of society would be able to understand it.

Rating: 5/5

 

About the author: David Beers is the author of two horror novels: Dead Religion and The Devil’s Dream, Book 1. He blogs on general musings and lifesaving advice at http://www.davidbeersauthor.com