Enemy is a very good psychological thriller. Jake Gyllenhaal plays two great subtle characters. The muted colour palette and eerie score give a great atmosphere. Denis Villeneuve purposely leaves it vague and open ended. It's very strange had hard to decipher. I found it to be a lot more enjoyable upon trying to uncover its meaning and narrative. Upon a passive viewing and likely a first viewing Enemy is hard to understand and seems a bit nonsensical or chaotic. But as the opening card says 'chaos is order yet undeciphered.' So let me try:

Anthony and Adam are the same person, just two different personalities of the same person suffering from multiple personally disorder. There are several clues the allude to MPD instead of simply just a doppelganger. Firstly, apart from both men looking exactly the same they also share the same voice and even have the same scar on their chest. Although not directly shown it's apparent from Adam's reaction that they both share the scar. Secondly is the blueberries. Adam supposedly hates blueberries while Anthony enjoys them. And while in a scene with Adam's mother she insists that he does enjoy blueberries, further blurring the lines between the two. Lastly Adam and Anthony have the exact same photo with Helen. Adam's copy of the photo has Helen's half ripped off.

Adam and Helen seem to be the original couple. He has a fear of commitment maybe brought on or at least amplified by Helen's pregnancy. Adam protests against the restrictions his relationship puts on him. In response he's created this other personality trying escape his commitment. Anthony is living out the life that Adam is not. Anthony is domineering, drives a motorcycle, is pursuing Adam's ambitions to have an acting career and is living life with another women.

The spider I believe is a visual representation of fear. Adam has an intense fear of commitment. One of the most common fears is Arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. The spider is meant to personify fear and specifically Adam's fear of commitment. It's also interesting to note that in the sex club that Jake Gyllenhaal attends a spider is showcased. This spider however is stepped on, symbolizing his apathy for commitment.

The two personalities play out a war for dominance. Anthony is subsequently killed when Helen shows affection toward Adam and tell him "I want you to stay." The Anthony part of Adam's psyche dies in the car wreck.

We are lead to believe that Adam has had some sort of resolution but Hegel's words ring true as Adam unveils a key to the sex club and says "I think I have to go out."

"All the worlds greatest events happen twice. The first time as tragedy, the second as farce." 7.5/10

Villeneuve has came out and produced another brilliant film, I love that he has used Jake Gyllenhall again after Prisoners. He owns this film with a wonderful performance.

There is a lot of confusion about the film and what the spiders represent, was there really 2 Jakes or were they the same guy? I have read some pretty interesting ideas from other people, I don't claim to completely understand it but would like to throw something out there for consideration.

The movie opens with the biggest clue of how to understand what your about to see when the message "Chaos is order yet undeciphered" appears. The whole movie is like a jigsaw puzzle that will make sense if you can put it together in the correct order.

I have not read every review or theory on it but from the ones I have read all seem to believe that the scene in the "Sex Club" we see at the beginning happens before most of the other scenes and that the scene at the end where he tells the wife he plans on going out before she turns into a giant spider is him repeating the cycle all over again.

In my opinion the "Sex Club" scene takes place afterwards, we see him walking down the corridor with the caretaker and only Jake has a key, he lets the caretaker in. We hear in the elevator the caretaker has been before but does not think he will get a new key. So it's my opinion that the key in the envelope is the new keys that were being sent out and he as a favour allows the caretaker to tag along.

There are some clues throughout the film though that go along with the theme of history repeating himself for example when we hear Jake give a lecture and then the same lecture slightly mumbled and less enthusiastic. I have read people say this represents his day to day life however my opinion is that they are actually a year apart. He was giving the same lecture to the next generation of students. I believe that most of the story takes place over a period of a year based on the 2 incidents where "6 months" is mentioned. The first is when he goes to the talent agency and the security guard has not seen him in 6 months, and then again when his wife says she is 6 months pregnant.

I won't go through every scene and tell you my opinion of what goes where as part of the fun is figuring it out for yourself by watching it a second and even third time.

I could be way off with all of this and completely wrong, but in my opinion that is the beauty of this movie.

Denis Villeneuve made this film before Prisoners but Enemy had a limited release after it.

The clues are there regarding any possible meaning about the film and its inspirations. Some people liken it to Fight Club, which tend to be people who think film history started from 1999.

Villeneuve is Canadian and so is David Cronenberg who once made a film called Dead Ringers which is about paranoia and delusion among identical twins. You can go back to 1970 with The Man Who Haunted Himself where Roger Moore had a double which appeared after he had an accident.

The film opens with a telephone message from a character's mother played by Isabella Rossellini. She was once married to Martin Scorsese whose recent film is Shutter Island. She also lived with David Lynch and also appeared in some of his movies, Lynch films are well known to visit weirdsville just check out Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and the television series Twin Peaks which also had a doppelganger.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Adam Bell, a History professor in Toronto. He looks dishevelled, his hair and beard rather unkempt. He very much has routine, the daily grind of going to work teaching the same thing to students and going back home where he lives with his girlfriend. He rents a movie based on a recommendation of a colleague and shot locally. He notices that the actor playing the bellboy looks just like him and decides to seek him out.

The film opens with a scene of an underground club where people are given a key to access a sex show/orgy taking place. Think a low rent version of the orgy from Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. One of the men in this club looks like Adam. We also for the first time here see the spider motif, here a tarantula on the verge of being squashed by a lady in high heels.

Adam identifies the actor as Anthony Claire who had bit parts in a few other films. Adam stalks Anthony, visiting his office and calling him at home. Everyone, including Anthony's pregnant wife Helen confuse the two men. In a separate dreamlike image, a giant spider lurks among and above the skyscrapers of Toronto. Helen is suspicious of Anthony, she suspects he is having an affair.

Adam and Anthony eventually meet in a hotel room and discover they are identical which includes having a scar in the same place. Adam is reserved, intellectual. Anthony is a hot head, sexual also neater and dresses better.

Of course two men can look alike, have the same voice but the same scar? This just indicates a split personality, two sides of the same coin. Is Adam the man going to the sex clubs, having an affair, a man who feels trapped like he was in a spider's web?

This is a film that has a left field ending full of symbolism which means you end up watching it again in order to see the clues. Bad luck if you did not like the film the first time around and the post production grading of dark yellow, teal, murky brown that I found so off putting. Every film seems to have a similar colour scheme even straight to DVD movies with Z list stars. When cinematographers like Vilmos Zsigmond and Nestor Almendros were shooting with rays of golden hues they were using real skill and artistry not using Photoshop during post production.

The real highlight was when you see the film within the film, brightly lit and colourful and you think why could not the rest of the movie look like that.

Enemy, is bound to be a cult film with a cultish following. Its intriguing, its like a puzzle box and open to different interpretation, full of symbolism and pretensions. Even the title of one of the songs used is called The Cheater.

The title of the movie signifies that Adam is his own worst enemy, a man destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, its almost farcical something he said earlier in his lectures. Even when he might have rid of his double for good we see him with a new key of the type at the beginning of the film, telling the pregnant Helen he will be going out that night. A serial adulterer who does not want to be trapped.

The film is good, it burns slowly into you but never immediately grabbed my attention afterwards but its not a great film. Something about it is too heavy handed like the murky colours and the garish yellows used in the film.