Enemy

This perplexing and - at one unexpected moment - utterly terrifying Canadian/Spanish thriller is adapted from Portuguese novel O Homem Duplicado (The Duplicated Man, published in English as The Double) by Nobel prize-winner José Saramago. Intriguing French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Incendies) finds themes in common with Dostoyevsky's The Double, in which a clerk's life is ruined by his doppelganger (recently filmed by Richard Ayoade) but it couldn't be more different in tone. In what appears to be an alternate, possibly totalitarian Toronto, Jake Gyllenhaal's soulless college lecturer chances upon his own duplicate (also Gyllenhaal) in a rented movie and proceeds to stalk him. While impending chaos seems to hover over the high-rise city and spiders are crushed for entertainment in a sex club, the two Jakes meet and their lives merge. Heavy with symbolism and the subconscious, Villeneuve's remote style, de-saturated palate and lack of answers make Enemy difficult to love, but it will stay with you.