The Double 2014

Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly: Director Richard Ayoade gets a huge impact from minimal expressionist sets. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Ayoade's breathtakingly realized oddity will appeal to fans of David Lynch and the comic surrealism of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil." Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: A dumb show annihilated on the electric wire of pretentiousness, The Double recalls too many similar movies for its own good. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: It's lifeless, for the most part, a drama suffocated by its schematic style. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: "The Double" has a theatrical, self-conscious quality to it; the performances feel stagy and its production design looks like a grimly monotone Wes Anderson movie. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Ayoade's new film makes little attempt to ingratiate. Simon's ordeal is a spectacle, not a tragedy meant to sear the viewer's soul; it's less psychological than satirical. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: It's a bleak, alienating vision by design, and the cruel sense of repetition that sets in feels entirely intentional, conveying again and again the weight of society bearing down relentlessly on one individual. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, AV Club: There's not a whole lot to this version of The Double, but its visual comedy and offhand surrealism make it a mild pleasure. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: "The Double" is a striking piece of work, but it's nostalgic for a kind of paranoia that may no longer exist. There are different things to frighten us now. Read more

Calum Marsh, Film.com: Confirms that Ayoade is indeed the real deal, an ambitious young filmmaker working in a register shared by far too few of his contemporaries. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: A darkly ironic and skillfully surreal examination of an unrealized life. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Ayoade borrows Kafka's bureaucratic nightmares without the cosmic humor, David Lynch's grotesquerie without the unhinged desires, Wes Anderson's curation without the image sense or world view ... Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: While this film about copies may feel a little familiar, it's also original - in all the best ways. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, NPR: If The Double never fully succeeds, it's still exactly the sort of challenge and risk one wants out of a filmmaker as promising as Ayoade. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: This workplace-as-hellscape is not new territory, exactly - the story's based on Dostoevsky, plays like Kafka, and looks like an Orwellian nightmare. But who'd complain, since it lets Jesse Eisenberg offer what amounts to an acting master-class. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: If you're on its wavelength, it's a dive into quirky, murky fun. But even if you are, this oddball offering is vague and slippery, a calmer brother to "Brazil" or Orson Welles' Kafka tale "The Trial." Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: The kind of movie that may have been more satisfying to make than it is to watch. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: The Double doesn't get very deep, but it does get interesting. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: As a pure head-trip visual and auditory experience it feels like one of the biggest discoveries, and biggest surprises, of 2014. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Ayoade creates a uniquely stylized dystopia, lit in dusty tones of olive and ochre and scored, mysteriously but somehow perfectly, to vintage Japanese pop. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: [A] pitiless and very funny comedy of misfortune constructed by director Richard Ayoade and his co-writer Avi Korine. Read more

John Semley, Globe and Mail: The film's bleakness is almost satirical. It's Brazil drained of the daydreams. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: The Double invites second looks and close examination. As Simon finds when peering into mirrors, what we see is often unexpected. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: Ayoade tips his hat to so many other filmmakers ... distilling all his references into a Pinterest board of paranoia and alienation. Read more

Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice: The Double, with its inviting alienation, nails a curious mood that's been too long absent from contemporary film ... Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: Most of the time, "The Double" feels less like watching a book than reading a movie. Read more