Dead Ringers Review: Between Charm and Imbalances | Prime Video Series
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Michael Chernus, Poppy Liu, Britne Oldford
Creator: Alice Birch
Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime Video
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
The review of Dead Ringers, the thriller TV series on Prime Video in 6 episodes with a double Rachel Weisz in the role of twins. Hot blood rushes through the lanes of ambition, while extravagant patrons sip spiritless fine wine. Twin sisters, identical in all respects, come together and collide in a dangerous game, linked not only by genetics but by a perverse, visceral, powerful bond. Dead Ringers is this and much more. Yet, like his protagonists, endowed with strengths and weaknesses, humans in his reaching very high authorial peaks and sinking immediately afterward under the weight of a certain mannerism. The people are two, but the face is the same. Lying on the same bed, the sisters Beverly and Elliot cross their faces, giving life to a single face but broken in two. There is no better image, clearly inspired by Bergman, to encompass the whole meaning of Dead Ringers, the 2023 female version of the 1988 film by David Cronenberg.
Beverly and Elliot are twins who share everything: work, lovers, passions, and their whole existence. A relationship so close and linked that they cannot be separated, so much so that they have the possibility of exchanging identities at the moment they deem appropriate. Yet this division exists. Not only in the different characters between the two but in an increasingly nascent conflict. One face, two people. It is the starting point of our review of Dead Ringers, the 6-episode series available on Prime Video starring Rachel Weisz, which updates David Cronenberg’s masterpiece with Jeremy Irons to today’s contemporary series. The result is a series that maintains the spirit dear to the Canadian director unchanged, through a subdued rhythm and a voyeuristic fascination with bodies, but which presupposes a great deal of trust in the viewer. Maybe too much.
Dead Ringers Review: The Story Plot
Dead Ringers, despite being two bodies, two minds, and two personalities. Twins Beverly and Elliot Mantle (Rachel Weisz in a dual role) can’t do without each other. Same workplace, same profession, same goal: to revolutionize medicine and open the act of childbirth to new scientific possibilities. The two want to open an innovative birth center, an idea that began with some experiments on the edge of ethics. And to the limit they lead their existence, sharing everything (lovers, relationships, thoughts), playing with their identities (the two cyclically exchange them), and keeping only their personalities slightly separate: colder and more cynical, tough and arrogant Elliot; more affectionate and sensitive Beverly.
It will be Beverly who causes the first real rift of her life with her sister. Falling in love with an actress named Genevieve and living this romance without sharing it with Elliot. A feeling of confidentiality will cause an imbalance in the relationship between the two twins and will initiate an increasingly visceral revenge on the part of Elliot. A crack between them is destined to become ever deeper and more extensive and that will change their lives, their relationship, and their future forever.
Dead Ringers Review and Analysis
If there’s one thing that immediately catches your eye looking at Dead Ringers, it’s how much Rachel Weisz manages to take charge of almost the entire work. Forced to play the double role of Beverly and Elliot, Weisz gives the viewer a real test of sheer talent. Because often and willingly, more than satisfying for the viewer, this situation simply proves to be a challenge for the actor, often forgetting that the emotional involvement of the audience is necessary. It is therefore essential to be able to remain in a very complicated balance, which must deal with the different personalities of the characters without exceeding in exaggerations.
And if Weisz really succeeds in the miracle (net of a voluntary feeling of confusion between Beverly and Elliot at certain moments, one always recognizes who one is and who the other is), unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the writing that should make the most of this actor’s game. The screenplay often gives in to exaggerations (of tone, content, explanation) adding gratuitous difficulties to Weisz’s already complicated acting work. The result is a magnetic test, the true catalyst of the series, but which often slips into excessive monologues where the tones seem to be part of a decomposed and out-of-tune symphony.
Just the tone of the series is the most problematic character of Dead Ringers. The series created by Alice Birch wants to maintain the disturbing and Cronenbergian sense of the original work, but she seems to feel the pressure of being a contemporary remake of a title that works above all thanks to the Canadian director’s style and poetics. And this is how Dead Ringers travels on two fluctuating tracks, between a very composed and serious way of dealing with the narrative and the desire to exaggerate. Perhaps driven by performance anxiety, the work being written unbalances the series by placing it halfway between the most disturbing thriller and a rather confused taste that slightly flows into kitsch.
With a very dilated rhythm and with a narration that proceeds through long static dialogues, the series works, however, in building a magnetic atmosphere (provided that the viewer is willing to sit comfortably and sip the vision) where, in the best moments, the support of the direction and the images contribute a lot to the success of the work. One wonders how many viewers will be able to remain enthralled by the story which, albeit requiring a lot of patience, as the episodes progress, reaches considerable heights of situations and tests of courage (but already in the first episode, between birth scenes and medical situations, the sensitive audiences may find it repulsive). We appreciate the courage of the operation, and we keep close to the most successful elements.
The Prime Video series is a reinterpretation of the Cronenberg film of the same name, in turn, an adaptation of the novel by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland who were inspired by the real story of the Marcus twins. In short, Dead Ringers has passed through various mediums before arriving on the small screen, passing from the written to the cinema. The story tells us about Beverly and Elliot, established doctors specializing in gynecology and obstetrics. No, it’s not a Dr. House procedural, but the story of two twin sisters, identical in appearance and different in character. They share work, lovers, drugs, and excess. Theirs is an almost symbiotic relationship, morbid and in the eyes of the unhealthiest. However, this does not seem to stop them from their intent: to help women by rewriting the rules of the health system. It doesn’t matter which walls they have to break down, which ethical or moral ones. Unfortunately, every gesture has its repercussions, even for them.
At the time the dubious role was played by Jeremy Irons, while Rachel Weisz was chosen for the series. The starting story is thus re-read from a female point of view, in the same way as the direction of the product; written and directed by female artists. The actress thus plays the role of both Beverly and Elliot. The first is sober and austere, while the second is a ferocious and brazen beast. We have to say, Weisz’s acting performance is not always convincing, repeatedly falling into caricature, into an excess of grimaces and gestures. An overacting able, in some cases, to make us grind our teeth more than the bloody scenes. Fortunately, this aspect does not undermine the success of the series, which still proves to be an excellent experiment.
Dead Ringers follow much of the plot of the film, expanding the discourse thanks to the episodic format. The protagonists manage to open their center, in which to carry out brilliant research, but not without moral dilemmas. The relationship between the two sisters will crack step by step, accentuated by the arrival of Genevieve (Britne Oldford), Beverly’s love interest. All staged according to Alice Birch’s point of view, who prefers dialogue to action, the static nature of the image to the dirty room; she the latter too much abused by a certain indie cinema. Spaces tighten and darken around the characters. The light fades, the windows disappear, and black and red reign supreme. That of Beverly and Elliot is a descent and a return from the underworld, from which one can only re-emerge into the light. Indeed, the latter returns strong and dazzling only in the final bars.
Claustrophobia is also traced by the direction, which seems to prefer the close-up and the half-figure. The overall scenes are instead enclosed in preponderant geometric figures, a metaphor in our opinion of the rigorous rules that the protagonists will break. Not for nothing else their clinic fights the cubic and the angular with wavy, ovoid shapes. Dead Ringers make form its trademark, launching itself into virtuoso shots that wink at Kubrick. The show tries, to the limits of excess, to surprise the viewer’s eye, to displace his mind through the shock. He does this using sometimes crude images, other times with a strong eroticization of the characters. This is the case of Beverly, and this speech is linked to Weisz’s interpretation of these over-the-top cases. In creating its potion, the series makes excessive use of the grotesque, although initially it was well combined with this sort of retrofuture that permeates the scientific sector.
Dead Ringers Review: The Last Words
In conclusion, Dead Ringers is not a perfect series and not even for everyone. It has made no secret of it since the trailer, outlining himself as a product outside the box of the mainstream, which does not necessarily have to appeal to everyone and speak to everyone. Rachel Weisz’s acting doesn’t always find our favor, especially when she plays Beverly. The criticism of the elitist society is strong, but these days too much are abused. Instead, what convinces us is a story full of metaphorical elements, worthy of a detailed psychological study. In short, the series arrives and upsets the cards. Curious that a series entitled Dead Ringers is so broken down, in tone, in the rhythm of the story, in the writing. David Cronenberg’s film lives on in this contemporary and feminine key, managing, in the best moments, to keep its uncanny charm unchanged. But Rachel Weisz’s enormous talent is not enough to captivate and bond with the viewer, who will have to be patient or fight against six very repelling episodes.
