Rachel Weisz is double trouble in Dead Ringers
Why you need to see Prime Video's remake of David Cronenberg's 1988 horror film. Plus, Netflix's new Anna Nicole Smith doco, and everything else landing this weekend.
Mōrena and welcome to Rec Room! A completely different post was planned this week, but sometimes a TV show makes you analyse your life choices. I’ve dropped everything for Dead Ringers, a show I didn’t want to watch, didn’t think I’d like and didn’t have any interest in. After sitting through the riveting first episode, that’s changed. It’s so good that on Monday night I chose to watch Dead Ringers over Succession. If you can get past how graphic it is, I think it will win you over too.
-Chris Schulz, senior writer for The Spinoff
She’s full-on, over the top, way too much – and awesome
Rachel Weisz is smashing felafel into her face. She’s barely finishing one bite of her pita pocket before ripping into the next. Yoghurt dressing is smeared across her cheeks. When she talks, chunks fly in all directions. “You … ah … having a good day?” asks the owner of a nearby food truck, cautiously watching her inhale food like she hasn’t eaten in a week. “No, I’m having a fucking shit day,” replies a frazzled Weisz, felafel stuck to her bottom lip and chewed pita hanging out the corner of her mouth.
It’s here that things take a turn. Weisz – playing one of two gynaecologist twins and absolutely monstering every scene she’s in – has just witnessed the death of a mother. Because of a missed post-birth scan, a father has been left literally holding the baby. It could have been avoided, and Weisz’s Dr Elliott Mantle needs an outlet, so the felafel guy gets it in the neck. “Fuck you for asking about my day,” she snarls. “Seriously” – she pauses here to tear off another bite of her pita – “Fuck you!”
If you can’t already tell from this scene, Weisz is absolutely letting rip. There’s something primal, almost feral, about her dual performances in Dead Ringers, Prime Video’s incredible gender-flipping reboot of David Cronenberg’s 1988 psychological horror. As Beverley, she’s more conservative, the doctor who cares, the one that wants to give every mother, and every baby, the chance to live a long, happy life.
Elliott is her coke-sniffing twin, the one chasing A-list movie stars, asking a husband to get “it” out while his pregnant wife’s in the toilet, breaking all the rules to grow a test tube baby. I don’t want to say any more, because to do so would be to spoil Dead Ringer’s more sadistic delights, but if you’re picturing a TV show entirely dedicated to gynaecologist versions of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s snarling Fleabag and her stuck-up sister Claire, you’re nearly there.
The result is television’s most frenetic, full-on, full frontal show. The first episode of six is soaked in blood, has multiple graphic sex scenes, rivals Succession for use of the f-word, and at one point made me flee the room. It also continues Hollywood’s controversial trend of graphic birth sequences (see: House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, Yellowjackets and Fleishman is in Trouble) with a montage so confronting I was forced to put down my snacks and peer between my fingers. Don’t eat your dinner over this one. You’ll discard it within the first five minutes.
Rebooting and gender-flipping Cronenberg’s cult classic seems like such an unlikely move. How did Weisz pull this off? According to this interview with the BBC, all those conversations with herself wasn’t easy. Weisz played one side, ran into hair and make-up, then did the other. Someone talked to her through an earpiece. Weisz calls it "the most challenging and most joyful experience in my career".
But there’s reason behind all that shocking stuff. Weisz and the show’s creators wanted to use Dead Ringers to make a point. “We're incredibly used to seeing violence and people being killed, death, blood... we're almost immune to that at this point,” she told the BBC. “For me, I think it's a beautiful moment, it's kind of a miracle when a baby's born. We didn't want to be coy about it.” That moment when she’s smashing felafel into her face? It’s because the woman who died was a woman of colour. “The high mortality rate for women of colour... we talked about that probably every day.”
If you can cope with a show that’s basically set in The Handmaid’s Tale’s birthing centre, you’ll find it’s crackling with electricity. It’s got the vibe of a classic 90s David Fincher film. It’s got dialogue like, “Why are you wearing my vagina like it's a fucking glove?” Episode one ends with a blood-curdling scream from Weisz, then Celine Dion cooing the lyrics to ‘Think Twice’ (“This is getting serious…”) Underpinning it all are two absolutely sensational, career-best performances by Weisz. Give her all the Emmys, now.
I get it if Dead Ringers may not be for you. It’s definitely not for everyone. But it is 100% for me. Right now, I don’t want to watch anything else.
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All the new stuff you can watch this weekend
Netflix is going all-in on documentaries this week, starting with Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me, a deep dive into the sordid details surrounding the model and socialite star’s life and untimely death. This one’s been labelled “depressing” by Variety. If that’s not enough, it also unveils McGregor Forever, about the MMA fighter Connor McGregor, and Working, Barack Obama’s series in which the former American president meets ordinary, everyday members of the working class.
Elsewhere, Apple TV+ keeps its impressive run of releases going with the second season of Prehistoric Planet, the David Attenborough-narrated dinosaur doco (my kids love this one), and High Desert, which is earning Patricia Arquette plenty of praise for her role as a recovering addict turned private investigator. “A tour-de-force of mad, messy, brazen desperation and determination,” declared The Daily Beast.
If you’re still watching zombie spinoff Fear The Walking Dead after seven seasons, congratulations, you made it: season eight begins on Neon this week. While you’re there, you can find all episodes of homegrown comedy Bouncers – we called it a “good show that could be great”. TVNZ+ unveils Bad Behaviour, another entry in the teenage boarding school drama category, this time from Australia.
If you’re after a movie at home, you can rent The Drop, a comedy from the Duplass brothers that has a really great trailer, and Linoleum, in which a children’s TV host tries to build a rocket ship in his garage, from Neon. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime debuts the incredibly titled Gerard Butler movie Plane. Otherwise, if you’re heading to theatres, Zach Braff’s A Good Person is finally getting a local release, but who are we kidding, you’re going to go and see Fast X, the tenth instalment of the Fast & Furious franchise, just like everyone else. Vroom.
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Everything you need to know
Let’s start with the most important thing right now: the full trailer for season two of The Bear, aka last year’s best show. Holy wow does it look hectic.
Being a MerPerson (an underwater performer) can be extremely lucrative. This trailer for the Netflix doco MerPeople suggests it’s a half-billion-dollar industry.
Rose Matefeo has a good one, so too does Guy Montgomery. As the International Comedy Festival continues its Auckland run this week, here’s Alex Casey’s full list of every local comedian’s TV specials that will give you a good laugh right now.
This is going to be a long one. That’s from Michelle Ang, the local film and TV star who’s been on the front lines of Hollywood’s writers strike. “I looked over at one point and was like, ‘That’s Christopher Nolan,’” she told us.
Variety has the new trailer for three Doctor Who specials on their way to mark the show’s 60th anniversary, which will include the return of former time lord David Tennant and his sidekick Catherine Tate.
Ben Affleck’s horrible run at the box office continues with Hypnotic, his second-straight shocker, reports ScreenRant.
I loved this Vulture interview with Justin Kirk on what it’s like playing Succession’s true villain, the show’s far-right new president Jeryd Mencken.
Finally, here’s your weekly trailer dump, so sink your teeth into Righteous Gemstones’ third season, a TV series based on The Full Monty that reunites the original cast, the Sarah Snook horror film Run Rabbit Run, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which looks very expensive and Oscar-y.
That’s it for Rec Room for this week. If you liked what you read, why not share Rec Room with your friends and whānau.
