On a good day, most of us would be lucky to have as much fun as Rachel Weisz does playing sociopathic twins in Dead Ringers (Prime Video, from Friday, April 21st). Weisz takes up the baton from Jeremy Irons, who portrayed codependent sibling gynaecologists in the 1988 David Cronenberg chill-fest (itself based on a true story).
Irons brought an exalted luvvy hauteur to the parts of Elliot and Beverly Mantle. Weisz, by contrast, goes full-on maniacal in the very first scene. Here Elliot and Beverly (the adaptation sticks with the original names) bait a yob who catcalls them in a restaurant. It’s massively satisfying seeing a boor cut down to size. The problem is that, the moment the Mantle twins get the man in their sights, you know exactly how it’s going to play out. They’ll lacerate him verbally, he will shrink into himself and essentially run screaming from the building.
That’s the problem with the new Dead Ringers. As a showcase for Weisz and her ability to electrify as yin-yang twins – Elliot is outgoing, Beverly a dormouse primed to explode – it is a masterclass. But her pyrotechnics are lassoed to an often dreary thriller. One that pings from plot point-to-plot point without ever once catching the viewer unawares.
To its credit, the new Dead Ringers aspire to more than conjuring intellectual goosebumps (as was the goal of the original). Gender-swapping the characters allows the show explore issues around fertility, race and class. An early montage, for instance, shows that, when it comes to pregnancy, women from across the spectrum often have to run a gauntlet of institutional indifference and unhelpful partners.
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We had sex maybe once a month. The constant rejection was soul-crushing, it felt like my ex didn’t even like me
There is also a critique of the corporatisation of healthcare in the US. Elliot and Beverly dream of opening a fertility centre that will prioritise women. But doing so involves getting into bed with a ghastly opioid magnate whom they describe as “the most morally corrupt woman on the planet”.
Dead Ringers is scripted by Alice Birch, who co-wrote the bloodless Hulu/BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. That series argued that Trinity College in Dublin stood at the centre of the known universe. And that the average mid-sized Irish town was a purgatory from which anyone with ambition should flee at speed. Which is really a transplanted British perspective of life outside London rather than anything to do with Dublin and the hinterlands.
She isn’t quite so withering about the Mantles and their playground of Manhattan (far more her kind of place than Sligo you suspect). But the same cool appraisal attends its sex scenes (Beverly is fond of random hookups) and birth sequences that amp up the gore. If you’ve ever flinched watching the Channel 4 maternity ward series One Born Every Minute, Dead Ringers will have you diving behind the couch.
Weisz is imperious and visibly having a hoot flipping between Elliot and Beverly. Good for her. It’s just a shame there isn’t more substance to this stylish psychological horror.
