--- title: "Dead Ringers: the reviews" canonical: "https://film.one/film/dead-ringers/reviews" title_page: "https://film.one/film/dead-ringers" critics_score: 82 critics_reviews: 12 licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Dead Ringers (1988): what the critics said Critics' score 82 from 12 reviews: 12 positive, 0 mixed, 0 negative. The reviews are uniformly positive, with praise clustering around Jeremy Irons’ dual performance and Cronenberg’s restrained direction. Critics repeatedly credit Irons with making the twin gynaecologists distinct while conveying their troubling dependence on each other. Cronenberg’s clinical settings, controlled imagery and muted approach to physical horror are widely seen as making the psychological unease more disturbing. Several reviews also find compassion beneath the cold surfaces, describing a film whose treatment of identity, addiction and separation carries considerable emotional weight. The differences concern emphasis and enthusiasm rather than substantial objections. Scores range from 70 to 90, with even the more measured notices praising the film’s control and unsettling intensity; the supplied reviews offer few explicit reservations. Little White Lies concentrates on the antiseptic visuals and red accents, while Eye for Film gives particular attention to the twins’ misogyny and the humanity Irons brings to their psychological imbalance. ## Empire — Kim Newman Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 1 January 2000. The critic praises the film as an uncompromised, suspenseful study of identity, surgery, addiction and degradation that is profoundly moving despite its foregone tragic outcome. Cronenberg's tactful direction and Jeremy Irons' dual performance are singled out for particular praise. [Read the review](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/dead-ringers-review/) ## Los Angeles Times — Sheila Benson Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 22 September 1988. Dead Ringers announces Cronenberg’s full maturity as a major director, presenting his most spellbinding and least horrific work to date. The elegiac, compassionate story about symbiotic doctor-twins is wrapped around the auras of mastery and sexuality surrounding their intimate work with women’s bodies. [Read the review](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-09-22-ca-3398-story.html) ## The New York Times — Janet Maslin Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 23 September 1988. Cronenberg's film about twin gynecologists on the brink of madness is unexpectedly sleek and icy. The director has shaped a startling tale of physical and psychic disintegration centered on the twins' hopeless interdependence, delivering a mesmerizing and terrifically unnerving achievement. [Read the review](https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/23/movies/review-film-a-mirror-image-of-disintegration.html) ## Time Out — NF Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 29 November 2011. Cronenberg delivers an emotionally devastating study of the perverse relationship between identical twin gynaecologists that confronts fears of disintegration and mortality through abstract, expressionist imagery. Irons gives a superlative dual performance in a harrowing tale of separation and loss that leaves one drained but exhilarated. [Read the review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/dead-ringers) ## Little White Lies — Adam Scovell Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 23 September 2018. Cronenberg's 1988 film marks a shift toward grounded psychological and psychosexual territory, charting the twins' descent into addiction and identity crisis via binaries of inside/outside the body. The antiseptic visuals and red accents underscore themes of shared psychic instability and the collapse of distinct selves. [Read the review](https://lwlies.com/in-praise-of/david-cronenberg-dead-ringers-jeremy-irons) ## Radio Times — Tony Sloman Rating 4/5. Cronenberg demonstrates a uniquely distressing and subtle talent in this finely wrought urban horror tale of identical twin gynaecologists, transposed to Toronto. Jeremy Irons excels in the dual role, delivering a result unsettling enough to deter visits to fertility clinics. [Read the review](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-q2dcxk/dead-ringers/) ## The AV Club — Scott Tobias Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 13 August 2009. The critic praises Cronenberg's restrained, chilly direction of the lurid true-story-inspired tale of twin gynecologists whose codependency and detachment from human emotion lead to tragedy. Irons' dual performance and the film's mix of grotesque horror, dark humor, and underlying pity for its characters stand out as highlights. [Read the review](https://www.avclub.com/dead-ringers-1798217373) ## The New Yorker — Terrence Rafferty Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 26 September 1988. Cronenberg's psychological drama about identical twin gynecologists feels like a horror movie told with chilling, clinical austerity. The film leaves viewers clammy and shaken through its scarily focused intensity and unnerving exploration of the twins' symbiotic bond. [Read the review](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1988/10/03/secret-sharers) ## Variety Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 1 January 1988. The intense bond between identical twin gynecologists is fatally sliced when they both fall in love with the same actress. Cronenberg handles his usual fondness for gore in a muted style, with the final operation bloody but not lingered over. [Read the review](https://variety.com/1987/film/reviews/dead-ringers-1200427608/) ## Den of Geek — Ryan Lambie Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 10 May 2018. The critic calls the film an underrated, undisputed classic and a logical, restrained progression from Cronenberg’s earlier work, praising its emotional depth as an intimate portrait of codependency, jealousy, and heartbreak. They single out Jeremy Irons’ seamless dual performance as the twins for particular praise, noting how it conveys two distinct characters who are “two bodies, one soul.” [Read the review](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/dead-ringers-david-cronenbergs-classic-at-30/) ## Eye for Film — Jennie Kermode Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 11 May 2023. The critic calls it a sensitive yet intellectually robust work and Cronenberg's most interesting and boldest film. She singles out Jeremy Irons' complex dual performance for imbuing the story with humanity while exploring the twins' co-dependence, misogyny and psychological imbalance. [Read the review](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/dead-ringers-1988-film-review-by-jennie-kermode) ## Collider — Isabella Soares Rating B+. 20 April 2023. The critic finds Cronenberg's 1988 film a disturbing and compelling classic of body horror centered on the twins' codependent relationship. Jeremy Irons' dual performance is singled out as flawless and magnetic, especially in the second act as the characters descend into addiction and identity crisis. [Read the review](https://collider.com/dead-ringers-review/) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/dead-ringers.md