“Take Jake Gyllenhaal‘s lonely OCD decoder in Zodiac and [then] split him in two with one version schlumpy and Adam Goldberg-like and the other like Ryan Gosling on a motorbike. Mix in Eyes Wide Shut‘s plinking/cagey ‘sex party’. [Use] talent agency and university settings as nondescript/sterile as the stockbroker firm in American Psycho. Throw a curveball with inexplicable video-store detours from ye olden times. Stir it all together for a Franz Kafka stew.

“Add a sprinkling of Isabella Rossellini and two blonde love interests — Melanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon — who are both confusingly disappointed. You’re sleeping with Gyllenhall, ladies. Cheer the fuck up!

“Do all that and you might get this eery, compelling, off-putting, possibly slight but mercifully tight (90 minutes) cinematic adaptation of Jose Saramago’s “The Double” (’02).

“I kinda dug it but I have no idea if it’s any good or what happened or where I am anymore and what aiiiiiieeeeee that last sound/shot [might have meant]. WTF.” — from a 2013 Toronto Film Festival review by The Film Experience‘s Nathaniel Rogers.

Enemy was shot before Gyllenhaal’s other Denis Villeneuve-directed film, Prisoners, which several geek elite critics worshipped for its sprawling Fincherian murk but which I thought was an fairly interesting, well-made drag. Enemy will open limited theatrical basis on 3.14, but it will first be viewable on DirecTV on February 6th, or six days hence.