Avi Nesher's diabolically duplicitous 'Doppelganger'is arguably one of the 90s more unjustly neglected horror curiosities. A deliriously De Palma-esque psychodrama about the increasingly bizarre misfortunes of pretty, Holly Gooding (Drew Barrymore). Our Hitchcockian heroine, dramatically flees New York, awkwardly setting up house with guileless, good-natured writer Patrick (George Newbern). Their sweetly burgeoning relationship thwarted by the evilly erotic manipulations of, Helen's homicidally stab-happy, sinisterly stalking, dark glasses-sporting doppelganger.
This tantalizingly twisted body horror oddity is luridly festooned with Noirish tropes: shadowy F. B. I. Creeps: an abusive, scar-faced patriarch, skeevey psychiatrist, gory matricide, and a psychologically-spawned, polymorphously perverse sibling. These sordidly scheming protagonists creepily conspire against Helen's earnest hope for a new life in L. A.! No one could accuse, Nesher's phantasmagoric freak-out of subtlety, as, perhaps, his engagingly erratic shocker's strengths reside in the sensually skewed presence of sinuous scream dream, Drew Barrymore. Barrymore's exquisitely cherubic features, and enthusiastically unfiltered performance, are not without considerable charm. The gruesomely gunk-flinging, gelatinously gooey, KNB FX-laden finale is the deliciously crimson cherry atop this winningly eccentric 90s creature feature!
