Dune Director's Underseen Abduction Thriller Turns Into HBO Max Hit 12 Years Later - MCE Notices | California State Portal

Denis Villeneuve has spent the last decade becoming one of the most celebrated directors in Hollywood. But long before Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and the Dune saga made him a household name, Villeneuve was making stranger, more unsettling films that rewarded patience in ways that mainstream cinema hardly ever does.

Enemy, his 2013 psychological thriller, is such a film — and it has just found a new audience. The thriller has landed at No. 9 on HBO Max’s US Top 10 Movies chart on June 7, twelve years after it first crept into cinemas.

The rediscovery of this Villeneuve hidden gem is overdue, as Enemy is the kind of film that lingers longer after the credits roll. Its arrival on HBO Max charts suggests that Villeneuve’s ever-growing fanbase is doing what devoted audiences do: going back to the beginning and reliving the entire filmography.

Enemy Is A Unique Story

Enemy follows Adam Bell, a listless Toronto history professor played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who one day spots someone who appears to be his exact physical double in a minor role in the film he is watching. Consumed by the discovery, Adam tracks down a small-time actor named Anthony Caire (also played by Gyllenhaal), and what follows is a psychological unraveling that the film deliberately refuses to resolve cleanly.

Sarah Gadon and Melanie Laurent appear as the women caught in the orbit of these two men, and their supporting performances make the film what it is. Gyllenhaal, however, is the engine of the whole plot, playing two men who are superficially identical but miles apart otherwise. He uses the subtlest shifts in posture, eye contact, and vocal register to keep the two characters distinct, making this one of the most underrated performances in his career.

The thriller received mostly positive reviews, holding a 73% Certified Fresh score from critics and 64% from the audience. It earned $3.4 million at the box office after a 120-theater release.

Villeneuve’s Direction Is Some Of His Best

Image by A24

What Enemy reveals, in retrospect, is that everything Villeneuve would later become was already present in 2013. The suffocating atmosphere, the interest in duality and identity, the restrained exposition, and a total command of the movie’s tone were already present in this smaller-scale movie, just like they have been in his bigger ones.

Shot in a jaundiced yellow-grey palette that makes Toronto feel like a city from a half-remembered nightmare, the film is a masterclass in sustained unease and tension. Villeneuve doesn’t ever let the audience settle, building dread through accumulation and the smallest sounds and looks. For anyone who came to the director through Dune and wants to understand how that kind of visionary filmmaking develops, Enemy is essential viewing.

Enemy is streaming on HBO Max.