The show “Dead Ringers,” a remake of David Cronenberg’s 1988 film, seeks its discomforts in familiar places. “Who needs Cronenbergian body horror when you’ve got the natural course of women’s bodies and intimate relationships?” inkookang writes.
of the identical ob-gyns Stewart and Cyril Marcus.) Moody and challenging, Birch’s “Dead Ringers” hews surprisingly close to many of Cronenberg’s story beats, but the remake is more thematically ambitious—and more consistently engaging. Birch aims for something far more difficult than her predecessor: a vision that melds the erotic and the clinical—not as the twisted world view of two eccentric doctors but as a normalization of women’s realities.
Genevieve isn’t the only woman that Elliot and Beverly pursue—a venture that the actress recognizes as “wildly inappropriate,” after Elliot offers to meet Genevieve at a bar following their appointment, but seductive nonetheless. The physicians, who are stars in their field , also chase after a multimillion-dollar investment from a Sackler-esque heiress, Rebecca Parker , to launch their own birthing center—a shining institution on a hill that they hope will change “the way women birth forever.
The birthing center resembles an airy, hospitable spaceship, boasting wood accents and few corners. In one of the clearest borrowings from Cronenberg’s visual larks, the center’s stark-white atrium and blood-red uniforms evoke menstrual iconography in equal parts camp and sophistication. The rest of the production design emphasizes circles and arches, creating a timeless, soft-lit Manhattan with yellow cabs and retrofuturistic pastels.
Is it strange that this “Dead Ringers” is so fun? Much of the show’s creepy pleasures comes from Weisz’s magnificent performance; it’s almost always clear when she’s playing Beverly or Elliot, and when she’s playing Beverly impersonating Elliot or Elliot passing herself off as Beverly. Unlike Irons, Weisz also gets to be meanly funny, evidently relishing the scenes in which one or both of the sisters extravagantly humiliate smarmy men.
Meanwhile, in an unknown time line, Beverly expresses relief at Elliot’s demise. Who’s the good twin, and who’s the bad one? One of the lingering images of the original film is the array of clawlike metal instruments that Beverly commissions to use on squirming patients. The new “Dead Ringers,” a lush bouquet of twists and provocations, often seeks its discomforts in more familiar places.
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