Based on David Cronenberg’s 1988 psychological horror Dead Ringers, the latest Prime Video series starring Rachel Weisz doesn’t stray far from the source material. In this gender-swapped reimagining of the film, Weisz is the grounding force of an otherwise convoluted exploration of fertility, biotech, and the female body. Unlike the film, the series wades into the murky waters of capitalism and class warfare through the lens of women’s issues. Unfortunately, this is where the series falls short in the end.
Dead Ringers could’ve been good, and therein lies the tragedy. Beverly and Elliot Mantle’s attempts to open a revolutionary birthing center tackles fertility and womanhood in a new light, but ultimately struggles by the end of the series. It feels like two, disjointed stories are taking place within the context of the Mantle twins. What could’ve been a strong recontextualization of the film’s original themes of gender, of female empowerment at the risk of tearing the body apart, ends up fizzling out with confusing narrative choices.
Even more disheartening is the way the series fails to even tackle the growing psychosis of identity between the twins. Allusions to the complex relationship are brought up but remain just as obscure by the end. While modernizing the film’s attempt at commentary on bodies and gender, the series strays almost too far in the opposite direction. The moments the series makes an honest effort to point out healthcare’s social and racial discrepancies, it almost always feels disingenuous. By the time the series refocuses most of its attention on the growing toxic nature of the twins’ relationship and the complexities of identical identities tearing themselves in half, it feels aimless and empty.
When Beverley and Elliot reach out to billionaire investor Rebecca (Jennifer Ehle) to fund their clinic, they spent the weekend at her family’s home a la the Roy’s from Succession. Everyone is awful. As it turns out, billionaires and their families have the moral backbone of a feather. Who knew? It doesn’t feel much like an observation on the corrupt morals of the uber-wealthy when the series spends half of the episode mocking Beverley’s idealistic sensibilities of an accessible clinic for women.
It was hard to compete with Weisz’s version of the more free-spirited and borderline sociopathic of the twins, Elliot. She oozes charm that almost always makes you fall on her side of the twin scale when confronted with both simultaneously. It’s why this attempt at social commentary ultimately fails. You want Elliot to get what she wants, even at the cost of ditching Beverly’s morals.
All of this overshadows the true star of the series: Rachel Weisz’s ability to conjure chemistry with herself on screen. Every moment spent on just the twins felt like watching a heavyweight champion take out their top opponent with such admirable ease. Weisz’s performance as both Mantle twins outshadows Jeremy Irons in the original film. The distinct characterizations she manages to pull off as the more reserved Beverly, in contrast to the outlandish and charismatic Elliott, are beyond the scope of any ordinary actor. This is a woman on a mission. It makes the messy outskirts of the central narrative of the twins worth the watch.
It’s a shame a lot of this series was lost to its trappings. What could’ve been a successful reinvention of the film feels very shallow and misdirected. Aside from its opening episode, where we spend the day with both Mantle twins in a hospital bearing witness to the horrors of maternity, everything else disappoints. Perhaps an attempt at salvaging what lurks at the edges of the series is possible. It raises the question of how much motherhood and fertility often feels like an act of narcissism – how children become carbon copies of themselves in hopes of fixing whatever flaws exist within them. Much like the Mantle twins, parenthood is a slippery slope of an identity crisis in and of itself.
All episodes of Dead Ringers premiere on April 21 exclusively on Prime Video.
