Dead Ringers (2023)

The result is a breathtaking vehicle for Weisz and a bold, unflinching addition to Birch’s already exceptional portfolio. Dead Ringers isn’t afraid to push the envelope. In fact, it tosses the envelope into the shredder in its first scene and then proceeds to throw it in the garbage can and set it on fire as the series progresses. And it’s all the better for it.

The twisted tale of two unapologetic women who share everything makes this an unforgettable update to a captivating story. It is an uncomfortable and challenging watch that immediately grabs you and doesn’t let up.

Unlike so many of its peers, “Dead Ringers” reaps ample rewards from its central switch, preserving Cronenberg’s signature strangeness while taking the premise to new, surprising heights. ... “Dead Ringers” takes one kind of familial terror and merges it with another — sisters who once shared a womb now experimenting on others’. It’s a surefire route to get under our skin.

Weisz’s nuanced performance as Elliot and Beverly is next-level brilliant. ... A twisty, unsettling narrative that’s at once darkly entertaining and dangerously unpredictable. “Dead Ringers” is must-see TV, even when it’s hard to watch.

Weisz plays brilliantly off herself; it’s always apparent which twin is in the frame, whether it’s Elliot or Beverly or Elliot impersonating Beverly. The show transforms into a stylish nightmare, grounded in the real, physical as well as subconscious, messiness at the intersection of science and motherhood and sisterhood and technology and money and morality, whenever the Mantles are alone (separately or together). Yet Dead Ringers is smartest, and often devilishly funny.

This "Dead Ringers" carves out a path that's fundamentally different from the one laid out by Cronenberg, and not just because of the gender-swapped leads. But even if it takes some time to understand exactly where things are going and why, it can fall back on one of the most remarkable performances in a good long while.

This one pays off your patience. Don’t overthink it. Don’t watch it with your phone on. Give into its strange storytelling structure and breathtaking acting display. You’ll be rewarded. You may be nauseous too. But you won’t be thinking about the original.

All of Birch’s delicate, even dangerous work would have largely been for naught had she not nabbed Weisz. Playing Beverley and Elliot with a sharp, intimidating level of commitment, the actress is riveting and wondrous.

It’s a brutal watch—one often that had me reflexively gripping my stomach—but Birch’s Dead Ringers has proven an essential update to the classic Cronenberg film.

At times it over-reaches and succumbs to the streamer-disease of laborious subplots and overlong detours (investor soirees; employees behaving strangely; gluey streams of sociopolitical consciousness). Still, the hot creepy mess of the twin dynamic is beautifully executed: Weisz slips on the dual skins with campy relish. She is particularly vivid as Elliot, who feels like a classic Hollywood monster.

Moody and challenging, Birch’s “Dead Ringers” hews surprisingly close to many of Cronenberg’s story beats, but the remake is more thematically ambitious—and more consistently engaging. ... Much of the show’s creepy pleasures comes from Weisz’s magnificent performance(s).

Yes, TV does rely too much on remakes and reboots, but maybe I shouldn’t care when the result is this good.

Promises to be a rather magnificent drama, with a lean, dark, genuinely funny script by Alice Birch and two knockout performances by Weisz.

Whatever my frustrations with the Dead Ringers finale, it didn’t wipe away the provocative notes of the penultimate episode, and it left me with that feeling of simultaneous disassociation from and hypersensitivity to the outside world. It’s a feeling that I often get from David Cronenberg movies. This was appropriately similar, but distinctive. Just like the series itself.

Sure, it's creepy and confronting in the way you'd expect anything that's based off of the original Dead Ringers film to be. But on top of the gripping psychological nature of the drama, the palpable tension and the laughs, Weisz is also almost too watchable as the charming, hilarious, shocking and unguessable Mantle twins.

It’s a measure of this seductive horror show that you want to watch these weird sisters carry on, and on.

If you manage to survive the first episode without losing your lunch, you’re in store for a disturbing, supremely well-made horror show that’s written, acted and directed with Ari Aster-like skill.

This gender-inverted adaptation offers a welcome, if sometimes unsubtle, twist with its social commentary about maternal health and bodily autonomy. It also adds a few tonally inharmonious moments of outright social satire, particularly where the Parkers and their heinous extended network are concerned. But the biggest strength of this Dead Ringers, like its predecessor’s, is its stylish sense of dread.

For all the lush production values, smart, cutting dialogue, and Weisz’s monstrously fine performance, Dead Ringers still feels a bit much. ... Still, there’s enough craft and tension to hang on for the gruesome finale of this limited series.

If the final episode feels a bit rushed and reveals that some of the season's subplots don't really add up to much, Dead Ringers is an undeniably audacious, provocative, tough to shake series.

Birch bites off more than she can chew over the course of six entire hours. That said, it’s ultimately worth a watch for Weisz’s incredible work, some devilishly fun guest turns, and an ending that zigs where Cronenberg zags without feeling like an arbitrary change.

The dexterity of Weisz’s take-no-prisoners performance makes it hard to look away, but beyond that the show doesn’t make much of a case for feasting on it once, much less twice.

Its bedrock concerns about separation, division, and conception feel toothless and stretched thin; the series wastes hours on detours and dilemmas that could have been discarded without any appreciable loss. ... Dead Ringers neither lives up to its ancestor nor stands on its own as a uniquely demented work. Failing to do anything invigorating with its newly feminized POV, it squanders Weisz’s sterling turn and, in the process, its shot at transforming familiar flesh into something new.