InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 16
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DEAD RINGERS<br />
It’s hard not to see the Dead Ringers miniseries as yet<br />
another domino tumbling on the remake assembly line<br />
that turns everything from The Parallax View to Fatal<br />
Attraction into half-hearted content, primed for<br />
couch-locked consumption. Credit where it's due,<br />
Cronenberg’s underrated 1988 thriller at least makes<br />
for an intriguing selection, given its restrained<br />
manner, disturbing gynecological sojourns, and the<br />
demanding dual performance of its lead-playing twin<br />
doctors stuck in a codependent spiral. Anyone<br />
looking to play it safe (though what Cronenberg<br />
remake really is?) could have chosen to adapt<br />
eXistenZ, whose twisty, mind-bending plot and<br />
science fiction trappings seem at least better suited for<br />
serialization than this icy, melodramatic chamber piece.<br />
That said, the assembled team here is pretty strong:<br />
there’s dual-lead Rachel Weisz, blending the composed<br />
vulnerability of Disobedience with the ravenous bite of The<br />
Favourite; the likes of Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene) and<br />
Karyn Kusama (The Invitation) directing; and it’s all run by<br />
playwright/screenwriter Alice Birch, who penned the phenomenal<br />
Florence Pugh breakout, Lady Macbeth, and whose impressive<br />
television credits include Normal People and Succession. It’s all this<br />
squandered potential that makes the predictably tepid end result <strong>—</strong> a<br />
parade of extraneous themes, characters, and plot lines, scattered across six<br />
disjointed episodes <strong>—</strong> such a letdown.<br />
This fumbling effort highlights the unavoidable catch-22 of the<br />
movie-to-miniseries pipeline: a straightforward remake would be considered<br />
a futile exercise in imitation, but the full-scale remodel (as embarked on<br />
by Birch) remains awkwardly chained to its source material, leaving its<br />
myriad ambitions out of arm's reach. The original narrative of<br />
Beverly and Elliot Mantle's co-dependent self-destruction still<br />
grounds the project, but there are now hours of filler to dilute<br />
Cronenberg’s concentrated dose. Long sequences with the<br />
twins' parents, their sociopathic angel investors,<br />
their artist-in-residence housekeeper, the<br />
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