Drew Barrymore is an actress that has gone through bad periods, not only in her career, but in her personal life too. After being a prodigy child actress she descended into obscurity with mediocre films of low quality. While she has recovered from that dark past, this movie stays as a reminder of Drew Barrymore's worst days.
The movie starts with an interesting premise, very reminiscent to Brian De Palma's "Raising Cain"; with a plot dealing with multiple personality disorder that sets the story for a horror/thriller. Barrymore stars as Holly Gooding, a young woman who is trying to make a new life in California after a traumatic event of her past in which apparently her other personality killed her mother.
Suddenly, her past returns to haunt her as her evil personality is back in her life willing to ruin her new found peace and her new found love. In the middle of the chaos his new boyfriend, Patrick Highsmith (George Newbern), will try to help Holly to face the demons of her past.
Unlike De Palma's underrated thriller, "Doppelganger" is for the most part a mediocre film that not only never fulfills it's purpose, it also concludes in one of the worst endings of movie history. While Barrymore is definitely not at her best, she manages to keep her dignity with an above average performance. The rest of the cast however range from mediocre to painfully bad over-the-top performances, although Leslie Hope manages to be among the best of them.
The script is full of clichés and De Palma's influence is quite obvious. While the movie tries to be original by making literary references in almost every line, the dialogs are dull and the wooden acting certainly doesn't do any good. It has a fair share of nudity and for strange reasons, and excessive use of special effects.
The make-up effects are done by the outstanding KNB and are really among the few good things in the movie. However, the bizarre over-use of the effects in the totally out of context ending decreases the impact of KNB's work and makes cheesy what in a different movie would be amazing.
The fact that this is a B-Movie is no excuse for it's low quality, as with a better and more coherent script this could had been an interesting movie. Sadly, all we have here is a mediocre film that gets worse every second. Worthy for Barrymore's beauty. 3/10
