arachnidan

Spoilers

A strange movie that doesn't seem to lead anywhere. So Adam Bell ends up with the nice wife and she's happy about it. They're going to have a kid and all will be fine. So what? Am I supposed to care?

5/10

except that she turns into a fucking spider

it's worth seeing for a lot of reasons

What the fuck did I see there?

a film

Is that the best you could think of?

By setting a deliberate pace, Enemy wins the race to madness.

Denis Villeneuve is fast becoming the new David Cronenflyncherberg - - keep your eyes on this talent.


35 out of 5.

Can someone please explain to me what the fuck the ending meant?

Anyways, despite not fully understanding it, I thought it was solid. Jake Gyllenhaal and Sarah Gadon were both fantastic, and the cinematography/score were both stunning. B

it meant that she turned into a giant spider

I watched Enemy tonight. Hm. On an aesthetic level, it is definitely an admirable achievement. The otherworldly yellow-green tint. The gliding and disorienting shots of wires slicing through the city. The anxiety-inducing, insinuating original score. From the first scenes onward, the film expertly conjures an atmosphere of dislocation and paranoia. An urban nightmare. And it is the type of tantalizing cinematic mind game which turns the viewer into a nerdy detective. Why is a man in a suit giving a Nazi salute painted on the wall of the underpass? Is there any significance to the fact they are meeting in room 221?! And so on and so forth. One component restraining the film from the top shelf, in my opinion, is the relative dearth of character. I never felt for or became interested in either double beyond how they function as game pieces on the film's zany, spider-infested chessboard. The film intrigued and even slightly scared me, but it did not move me. I will give it a strong B.

that ending lol. I dug the movie, not really sure how I interpret the whole thing but it was an interesting watch.

Enemy

Enemy needed more pace, but despite that it was an interesting film. The final scene is as scary as fuck. Gyllenhaal is great at differentiating between the tired and fed up history teacher and the more upbeat and dark part-time actor. The cinematography is very wholesome, but the film is just too slow, and the score doesn't help matters. Aesthetically, it was spot on. I suppose I would have liked it to link more of its components (for example, the significance of room 221, the key and the secret club, the spiders, how the lecture on dictatorship fits into this parable etc.), and then instead of being a combination of intrigue and confusion, it could have strived to become a classic indie mystery thriller. For its weirdness and ability to create anxiety in the viewer, I will not forget this film in a hurry.

After thinking it over for a while, here is my interpretation of Enemy: The actor fears being a father. His psychological way to express that is his fear of spiders. When he goes to the sex club for leisure, a spider is there too, and it freaks him out. So in order to escape his "living hell" of having a child with a woman he doesn't love, he creates this other persona (the teacher), and it's obvious that he doesn't love the pregnant one because he is so quick to fuck the other woman.

Enemy is a top-notch and mature indie thriller. It has terrific performances and captures a certain silent deadliness of Canada. The meaning behind the film, while having to think about it and apply it oneself, is rewarding and elevates the picture to a whole new level.

A

*** / ***** (C)

It would be better with more spiders.

anxious. weird. gorgeous. measured. twisted. style, paranoia, pathos. excellent.

what the FUCK??? great movie experience

A


I saw this a couple months before seeing Arrival, and it definitely primed me to expect great things.

there were definitely shades of this in arrival. particularly the giant spider.

Saw it a couple of months back. Its haunting and equally thought provoking but lacks a certain energy needed for such dark movie and comes out boring after the first half, the middle act and finale were a letdown. Gylenhaal is great as always. 4/10

Villenauve is back in the black (3 good v 2 meh) cause I really liked this. The cinematography and editing are top notch. There is so much tension in a story that should be farely mundane. You see a person that looks like yourself in a movie. Most peoples reaction: oh hey that is funny I should send a link to my friends. The Jake’s reaction: this is worth questioning my entire reality over. Both see this as a way to escape the mundanity of their own lives, and though one side approaches this much more directly they both land in the same place.

However, the ending is dumb and removes the much needed ambiguity. Having a giant spider directly tells the audience they were the same person all along and there’s no resolution since Adam still doesn’t have a grasp on reality. It made me think of a comedian asking the audience if they got the joke. I was going back and forth on whether they were the same, but decided they weren’t after both girls are able to tell them apart, and both choose Adam. So while that end would have sucked for poor Amy, Adam taking over Anthony’s life didn’t seem like such a bad thing. But nope there’s a giant spider.

It is still worthy of a high grade, but if they had ended the movie 20 seconds sooner I would have declared it his best film. As is, Arrival still holds the crown.