The Guardian by Henry Barnes

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.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

The story arrives at a satisfying emotional conclusion with wonderfully thoughtful ramifications.

The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth

Totally bonkers, hilarious and wickedly clever, The Double is special and singular filmmaking at its best.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

As a pure head-trip visual and auditory experience it feels like one of the biggest discoveries, and biggest surprises, of 2014.

Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey

It is the interplay between Wasikowska and Eisenberg that gives "The Double" both its tension and its charm... Their struggle captivates, the resolution shocks, and you can't help but wonder what windmills Ayoade will tilt next.

NPR by Bob Mondello

This workplace-as-hellscape is not new territory, exactly — the story's based on Dostoevsky, plays like Kafka, and looks like an Orwellian nightmare. But who'd complain, since it lets Jesse Eisenberg offer what amounts to an acting master-class.

Empire by David Hughes

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.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

The Double, with its inviting alienation, nails a curious mood that's been too long absent from contemporary film: the anxious admission that the world might be weighted against the plucky individual, and that prickling you feel just before such thoughts make a sweat break out.

Film.com by Calum Marsh

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.

RogerEbert.com by Glenn Kenny

While the cinematography and production design give The Double a formidable if not particularly original look, what really sells the movie is its acting. Eisenberg is unshowily brilliant in his dual role.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore

Eisenberg, perfectly, pliably put upon, is the engine that drives this picture.

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.

Variety by Justin Chang

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 Telegraph by Tim Robey

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.

Slant Magazine by Chris Cabin

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.