An unsettling psychological thriller that boldly remade a classic doubles down to seize #1 on streaming

There’s always an element of risk when remaking a classic, especially one that was created by a distinctive filmmaker in their genre of preference, meaning there were plenty of eyes on Prime Video’s episodic overhaul of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers from the very beginning.

Fortunately, Rachel Weisz is on top form in the dual role of identical twins Elliot and Beverly Mantle, a gender-swapped spin on Jeremy Irons’ acclaimed performance in the 1988 original. The plot largely stays the same, with the siblings being drawn into a psychosexual plot of lust and betrayal that continually unnerves and unsettles, and the end result is a remake that fully justifies its existence and then some.

In fact, both iterations of Dead Ringers have identical Rotten Tomatoes approval ratings of 84 percent, so credit is well due for creator and showrunner Alice Birch for not just taking on the maestro of body horror at his own game, but doing it to almost the exact same level in spite of having to stretch the narrative of a 115-minute feature out into six episodes of television.

It’s proven to be a winning formula on streaming, too, after Dead Ringers was instantly deemed ideal binge-watching material by Prime Video subscribers. Per FlixPatrol, the small screen do-over has ascended right to the very summit of the viewership charts to rank as the streaming service’s most-watched episodic offering, even if there’s a distinct chance it turns out to be the sort of thing people watch once and then never again, even if it’s not in a bad way.