Enemy 2014

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: It doesn't add up to much of anything exciting ... Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Denis Villeneuve's moody, intriguing and, yes, occasionally silly psychological thriller. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Mysterious enough that many viewers will insist on seeing it twice. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Not just dark but dank, Denis Villeneuve's "Enemy" is a surpassingly creepy film about identity. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: This is fitfully successful as a mood piece, though the dream imagery is heavy-handed, the characters sketchily realized, and the high-toned dialogue comes out stilted more often than not. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Watching "Enemy," in which Gyllenhaal cleverly delineates the character differences and confidence levels of the two leading roles, it's clear that the movie is messing with you, in a highly calibrated fashion. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Movies about doubles are, almost by definition, creepy, but Villeneuve, not to be outdone, piles on the weirdness. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: "Enemy" is quietly and effectively eerie except when it's idiotic. Oh, well. Read more

David Ehrlich, Film.com: Might have the scariest ending of any film ever made. Read more

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter: As hauntingly strange as it is inconclusive and frustrating, Enemy, directed by Denis Villeneuve (Incendies), is one of the more head-scratching additions to the doppelganger genre. Yet it will certainly have its fans. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: "Enemy" may be built more on questions than answers, but in the probing it generates a satisfyingly arch hum of weirdness. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Despite some flaws and frustrations, this is one movie whose ending you will not see coming. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: The movie sticks to you ... and the ending is strange and sudden enough to make you revise, or interrogate, all that has come before. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Even if "Enemy" sometimes goes too far - and, in proffering any kind of internal logic, never goes far enough - it grips your attention from the very first scene. And will haunt you long after its last. Read more

Trey Graham, NPR: As the questions mount and the plot's twists get more and more improbable, the director's fierce control and fine-grained technique grow all the more impressive. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: The saving grace of this tricky, unsettling movie is Jake Gyllenhaal's edgy turn. Or, rather, his two edgy turns. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: There is only so much sense a movie like this needs to make, and this one succeeds in being divertingly clever and effectively creepy. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: A spooky enigma, more ponderous than provocative, more silly than suspenseful. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: "Enemy" is what might happen if someone let Terrence Malick make a "Twilight Zone" episode, with a quick rewrite by David Cronenberg. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: I can't get Enemy's peculiar, fevered mood, or the memory of that wackadoo last image, out of my head. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Enemy is a bewilderingly skillful metaphysical thriller combining Swiss-watch engineering and surrealism, like one of Dali's melted timepieces. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Despite Gyllenhaal's twitchy, two-headed performance, "Enemy" is hobbled by a genetic flaw: Suspension of disbelief has a twin called suspicion of dumbness. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Globe and Mail: Enemy operates on a level of carefully calibrated unease, where the very elusiveness of motivation and logic is exploited for purposes of sustained cinematic disorientation. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Enemy slowly but surely envelops us, like the web of the spider that seems to be crawling from Adam's psyche right into the real world. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: The movie is too literal and compartmentalized to take the psychological plunge it seems to constantly be intimating. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The story's dour flatness keeps it from being as disturbing as it aims to be. Read more

Michael Nordine, Village Voice: Gloriously enigmatic. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: The wan, lifeless palette matches the film's overarching tone of drained, depressive enervation. Read more