Credit: Netflix

A sigh: That’s all you’ll hear Jake Gyllenhaal’s character muster in the final seconds of Enemy, and, once you’ve seen what he’s looking at, you’ll want to grab the director Denis Villeneuve by the collar and demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing. The final scene in the film’s so sinister you’ll think about it for days.

And don’t go thinking Enemy is another psychological thriller where everything falls into place once it reaches its end, because Villeneuve has no intention of rewarding your detective work with a simple explanation, and since then, the viewers haven’t stopped arguing.

Based on José Saramago’s novel ‘The Double’, the film follows Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal), a miserable Toronto history professor who discovers an actor named Anthony Claire, also played by Gyllenhaal, bearing an identical resemblance to him.

As any normal, sane human being, he becomes obsessed with finding his double, and before long, the two men’s lives intertwine with Anthony’s pregnant wife Helen (Sarah Gadon) and Adam’s girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent), paying the price for their weird fixation.

And you’ve got to admire Jake Gyllenhaal here, because making two identical men seem worlds apart without relying on theatre can be achieved by nothing but pure talent, and his portrayal of Anthony as an arrogant womaniser makes Adam appear almost harmless by comparison. Ahh, but don’t let that gentle history professor image fool you, because as the film progresses, your views about these characters keep shifting.

The real tragedy, though, is of Helen and Mary, who become pawns in this psychological nightmare just because two grown men can’t get their heads around their own identities. Anthony impersonating Adam to sleep with Mary is quite vile, and watching Helen struggle with her husband’s deception makes you wonder why anyone’s wasting sympathy on the men in the first place.

Now, major spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t watched it yet, you better stop reading now. After Anthony and Mary die in a car crash, Adam returns to Helen and discovers a key associated with a clandestine sex club, suggesting he’s contemplating another excursion into the behaviour that has caused such misery. He enters the bedroom expecting to find Helen and instead encounters an enormous spider cowering against the wall. Oh, for God’s sake, Denis! A giant spider? In the bedroom? And Adam’s response is a weary sigh?

But hang on, have another look at that creature, because the poor thing seems frightened of Adam. And Christ, that’s far more disturbing than having a giant bloody spider turn up in your bedroom! Now, there’s a theory that Adam and Anthony are two sides of the same man, and the spider represents Helen’s fear of him cheating on her. Which makes his reaction all the more telling. The man looks like he’s had enough, but not enough to change his ways.

And that’s what makes Enemy such a dirty piece of filmmaking, because Villeneuve spends the entire film making you suspicious of a mysterious double before confronting you with the possibility that the protagonist was the real issue. Forget trying to work out why there’s a spider in the bedroom, people; the more problematic question is why the poor creature seems terrified of the man standing before it.