At last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Jake Gyllenhaal gave three great performances in two great movies for one great director. The more high-profile film was Prisoners, the critically-acclaimed thriller from director Denis Villeneuve. The other was an eerie, Kafkaesque tale called Enemy, based on José Saramago’s 2002 novel The Double and also directed by Villeneuve. Now, we have the first trailer for the film and it is just as tense and mysterious as the final product is.
In what may be the finest performance (or performances) of his career, Gyllenhaal plays Adam Bell, a tired history professor who spots his doppelgänger in a movie he rents. Haunted by this double’s appearance, Bell sets out to find this man, Anthony St. Claire (also played by Gyllenhaal). Both Adam and Anthony are going through their own personal conflicts: Adam is having trouble connecting to his girlfriend, Mary (Melanie Laurent), while Anthony’s pregnant wife, Helen (Sarah Gadon), is having doubts about her relationship with him.
A Canadian-Spanish co-production, Enemy is both eerie and existential, a bit of Hitchcock mixed with Dostoyefsky with a couple shots of Cronenbergian body horror. In fact, at a screening of the film I attended, the audience recoiled in shock and horror during the film’s final scene. If the trailer for this thriller piques your curiosity, make sure that nobody spoils the ending.
Enemy is set to haunt your dreams when it hits theatres on March 14. Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think in the comments section.
