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Dead Ringers, Prime Video
★★★★
David Cronenberg’s 1988 film Dead Ringers is a masterfully subtle exercise in body horror, a sub-genre the Canadian writer-director more or less created. Starring Jeremy Irons as twin-brother gynaecologists, it was a dark and twisted tale of mutual dependence, manipulation, abuse and, ultimately, a dark fascination with, and horror at, the female genitalia.
Based on the book Twins, which was itself a fictionalised telling of the real-life case of drug-addicted New York gynaecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus, who died aged 45 in 1975, Cronenberg’s film has now been reimagined as a seven-part series that more or less reclaims the female body.
Rachel Weisz and Rachel Weisz In Dead Ringers, which is adapted from David Cronenberg’s 1988 movie. Credit: Prime Video
Elliot and Beverly Mantle are now female ob-gyns, the former a laboratory-based specialist in pursuit of advances on the reproductive cycle, the latter a ward- and theatre-focused doctor with a calming manner and a mission to demedicalise the process of giving birth.
Rachel Weisz plays the sisters with subtle but clear distinctions of manner and personality. Elliot is a charming bully with a ravenous appetite – for men, for food, for alcohol, for drugs. Above all, she craves dominion over nature; her ultimate goal is to grow a fetus to full term without the need of a body to host it.
Beverly, the younger of the two and referred to by Elliot as “baby sister”, craves nothing more than to gestate a child inside her womb, a plan repeatedly brought undone by miscarriage. Though she radiates empathy, she is almost incapable of experiencing genuine joy.
Weisz as Elliot Mantle. Or is it Beverly?Credit: Prime Video
Together, these two are so much more than the sum of their parts.
Created by Alice Birch, the immensely talented writer of the movies Lady Macbeth and (with Sebastian Lelio and Emma Donoghue) The Wonder, as well as the series adaptations of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Conversations with Friends, this take on Dead Ringers is less body horror than mind f---. Its main interest is the power dynamic between the twins, the painful journey towards separation, and the struggle each has to carve an existence out of the shadow of the other.