The Double taps into a deep reservoir of psychic turmoil even as it navigates the script’s abundant jokes, and the nightmare of the heart of the film is doubtless universal.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Whatever the film's interest may be in the marginalized, writer-director Richard Ayoade never alludes to what would even be worth fighting for in this nightmarish industrial landscape.
Time Out London by Dave Calhoun
Ayoade tips his hat to so many other filmmakers and writers that he leaves little room to consider anything other than what a good job he’s doing of distilling all his references into an effective Pinterest board of paranoia and alienation.
Given the obvious influences on The Double, it could have felt like a facsimile of other films. Instead, it has enough individuality, imagination and idiosyncratic invention to identify it as a true original.
The story arrives at a satisfying emotional conclusion with wonderfully thoughtful ramifications.
The Double isn't an original idea. It wasn't even in Dostoyevsky's time. But it's a great story. And Ayoade has produced a brilliant copy.
Undeniably impressive as a visual-psychological construct, The Double is ultimately a rigid, one-joke movie that feels hard pressed to sustain any sort of momentum over the course of its 92-minute running time.
The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth
Totally bonkers, hilarious and wickedly clever, The Double is special and singular filmmaking at its best.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore
Eisenberg, perfectly, pliably put upon, is the engine that drives this picture.
It's a bureaucratic noir nightmare that may put you more readily in mind of Kafka, albeit with a tone of tongue-in-cheek bleakness that's bracing and funny – at least at first.