Doppelganger

Plot synopsis:
The story follows Holly Gooding (Barrymore), who moves from New York City to Los Angeles after being implicated in a murder. She is followed by what is apparently her evil twin. While in Los Angeles, she finds a room for rent by a writer named Patrick. After some strange occurrences, it becomes less and less clear whether the woman is in fact Holly or her Doppelgänger.
Patrick soon starts to realize something is odd about Holly. As he spends more and more time with her, things heat up and he falls for her. He then finds out that Holly's brother, Fred, is in a psychiatric hospital after killing his own father. When Patrick finds out that Holly's mother was murdered and she is the prime suspect, he starts doubting her sanity. But by that time he is too attached to her and does not want her going to jail. So when her brother Fred is attacked and she once more is a suspect he decides he is going to get to the bottom of it, no matter what.

Tags: good versus evil, cult, murder, plot twist

Review:
Drew Barrymore's sultry little dances and always seductive scenes.
Early in Drew's career...look to Ever After and Wedding Singer if you want better acting.
Could have been wrapped up in a TV show slot, and it indeed felt rushed at the end with a "bad-guy explains his whole evil plot" sequence.It's good for a laugh, and good to waste some time, but don't be too critical of it.
On the plus side, Drew Barrymore burns up the screen with a much steamier performance than the one she gave in "Poison Ivy", and the "good guys" are unusually likable (in an unforced way) for a horror film.
Drew Barrymore made this not long after poison ivy and in this one she goes a step further towards adulthood by playing a good girl who's being stalked by a slutty, murderous double of herself.
Drew Barrymore at the lowest point in her career....
Drew Barrymore is an actress that has gone through bad periods, not only in her career, but in her personal life too.
While she has recovered from that dark past, this movie stays as a reminder of Drew Barrymore's worst days.The movie starts with an interesting premise, very reminiscent to Brian De Palma's "Raising Cain"; with a plot dealing with multiple personality disorder that sets the story for a horror/thriller.
Barrymore stars as Holly Gooding, a young woman who is trying to make a new life in California after a traumatic event of her past in which apparently her other personality killed her mother.Suddenly, her past returns to haunt her as her evil personality is back in her life willing to ruin her new found peace and her new found love.
In the middle of the chaos his new boyfriend, Patrick Highsmith (George Newbern), will try to help Holly to face the demons of her past.Unlike De Palma's underrated thriller, "Doppelganger" is for the most part a mediocre film that not only never fulfills it's purpose, it also concludes in one of the worst endings of movie history.
The rest of the cast however range from mediocre to painfully bad over-the-top performances, although Leslie Hope manages to be among the best of them.The script is full of clichés and De Palma's influence is quite obvious.
While the movie tries to be original by making literary references in almost every line, the dialogs are dull and the wooden acting certainly doesn't do any good.
It has a fair share of nudity and for strange reasons, and excessive use of special effects.The make-up effects are done by the outstanding KNB and are really among the few good things in the movie.
However, the bizarre over-use of the effects in the totally out of context ending decreases the impact of KNB's work and makes cheesy what in a different movie would be amazing.The fact that this is a B-Movie is no excuse for it's low quality, as with a better and more coherent script this could had been an interesting movie.
Terrible script, lousy acting, amateurish directing, laughable special effects...it's just an utterly awful movie.
After spending the whole movie wondering what in the world is going on here when things are finally explained you realize the story has been built on a foundation which is ludicrously impossible.
In one of those hideous "villain explains the whole movie" sequences we are told that our villain has done something which quite simply can't be done and which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
I'm sure Drew Barrymore would very much like to pretend this movie never happened.
If for some ungodly reason you are ever tempted to sit down and watch this movie may I suggest instead taking that time to bang your head against a wall for 104 minutes.
I had faith that Drew couldn't possibly have made this bad of a movie...
Drew tried, but the movie was poorly written, poorly acted, and just poorly conceived!
Even in a bad film, there is usually some redeeming feature, something that you can say yes it was terrible, but there was that performance, or that part of the script, or that special effect, this was just simply terrible all over.
The acting was laughable, the script terrible, complete with many inexplicable Breakfast at Tiffany's references, and even the special effects were shoddy at best.
This was a very bad film and one that even Drew Barrymore wishes was expunged from history.
While it might look good, there's no denying how ridiculously silly the story becomes (like some sort of parody) and the acting (mainly the support; Leslie Hope and Dennis Christopher) is overdone.
Drew Barrymore is the star, but looks all out of place in the role and George Newbern as her lead comes off bemused more often.
The concept isn't bad, but the hollow plot lacks cohesion and involvement in what turns out to be nothing more than unintentionally hilarious in its b-grade shadings and a disappointing smokescreen by the end..
A lousy movie with a beautiful Drew Barrymore.
I wanted to watch it as I like Drew Barrymore and wanted to see one of her early movies.
The movie is about a girl (played by young and beautiful Drew Barrymore), who moves from NYC to LA in order to get over her recently troubled loss.
Short after moving to a guy who falls in love with her, it becomes obvious that she has an evil twin=doppelganger, who haunts her.The movie is quite poor and lousy.
Summing up it is just something for the fans of Drew Barrymore..
Drew Barrymore's Double Trouble.
Next, Drew Barrymore visits an unidentified woman and stabs her after bleeding from the nose and showing webbed fingers.
The story really gets started when Barrymore (as Holly Gooding) arrives in Los Angeles to answer a "roommate wanted" ad placed by cute young writer George Newbern (as Patrick Highsmith).
The TV never worked.***** Doppelganger (4/24/93) Avi Nesher ~ Drew Barrymore, George Newbern, Leslie Hope, Dennis Christopher.
I think that this movie was good.
Drew Barrymore did an excellent job.
Although this wasn't the traditional horror flick, it was a movie worth watching, (even more than once)..
Doppelganger has its moments, but they are few and far between.Essentially, this is a grade B blend of pop-psych thriller, ghost story and horror.
Drew Barrymore plays a young woman who is haunted by the demons of her past (most of her family has been murdered and she was, in at least one case, the prime suspect), or does she just have a really bad case of multiple personality disorder?
George Newbern is her new room mate, and most of the action centers on him.Newbern's character is pretty sympathetic, and both he and Barrymore do decent work (though not exactly good).
Leslie Hope's character is memorable, but so irritating that you will want to forget her.The plot eventually disintegrates into a bifurcated (one story arc is psychological realism, the other is supernatural horror) outlandish climax which is so badly conceived, acted and photographed that it effectively counteracts most of what value the film had achieved previously.Overall, the film has the feel of what might expect to be the result of M.
The acting and script for the two leads are just good enough to make you care a little about them - at least until the film derails utterly and completely.My recommendation - send your doppelganger, but avoid a first-person encounter..
I got the DVD very cheap and I'm a total Drewbie, and thats probably the only constellation where this movie could ever interest anyone.An early Drew movie, she's looking great, and she gets a quite lot of really cute scenes of her, like a shower scene, a sexy dance scene, quite a number of sexy outfits etc.
There is no real horror or tension built up and the dialogs are often cheesy.The most interesting part is probably the end because I honestly don't understand it.
But at least you don't get the end you would be expecting, and it also comes much sooner than one would have expected.Overall I think this movie is exclusively for Drewbies..
Lots of gore in the end sequence and if you like a dose of schlock horror then this is the film for you....
Always enjoy the great acting of Drew Barrymore and her great performance in this film, where she plays a very very complicated young gal,(Holly Gooding),"Skipped Parts",2000, who leaves New York and travels to California and shares an apartment with a up and coming writer, George Newbern,(Patrick Highsmith),"Far Harbor",'96.
Many strange things start to happen to Holly and she seeks to find her brother in a mental institution after he killed her father.
If you look close enough you will actually see the mother of Drew Barrymore in real life appear as her mother in this picture.
If it was not for the good acting of Drew Barrymore and George Newbern, this film should be seen only on Halloween Night!
This is one of those movies that you get into hoping it's going to be an excellent Thriller But as time passes you see that it's not.
I love Drew Barrymore so I thought I would give the movie a chance.
The movie started out unique and suspenseful and it's time past the movie got more and more hideous, the ending was absolutely ridiculous.
Not something I will see again and sure as hell not a good Halloween movie.
Drew in bad horror.
New York heiress Holly Gooding (Drew Barrymore) kills a relative who's looking to push her out of the family fortune.
The movie has a few possible ways to go and the audience is simply left waiting for it to decide.
One would think a movie couldn't possibly screw up a naked Drew.
The horror effects are subpar and becomes even more noticeable as the movie takes the turn..
I have to admit that I like Drew Barrymore, but not in this loser.I was really shocked.
Drew Barrymore's acting almost reached that of a Junior High School Play.
I've seen other good actors in terrible films but they at least give the terrible material their best shot.
Illogical plot lapses, inept attempts at weird scares, and a waste of Drew Barrymore.
She was slumming it to appear in this one.Her acting isn't bad, even at that lean part of her career she could take the least of characters and make the most of it.
Basically, Drew's character is a nut-job who thinks she's got a ghostly apparition following her around.
Things take the predictable horror movie turns: repeated sightings, terror, a few bodies and blood, etc., until the producers got tired of looping around in circles and give a ridiculously nonsensical ending.
Good Horror Movie Goes Bad. SPOILERS WITH-HELD For what starts out as a good horror/murder movie, it sures gets stupid quick and fizzles out.
Drew is wildly kept uninhibited, much like Alyssa Milano in "Embrace of the Vampire,"  and George Newbern is a rather odd witness to the events around him.
The rug is constantly pulled under him as he believes Drew's character Holly Gooding is a murderer, then being set up, and then being haunted.
There's not much horror, but lots of suspense to this movie which ends with an anti-climactic crash of confusion.
Drew Barrymore In a Very Different Type of Role!.
Drew Barrymore was excellent in this film.
Still, it's pretty nauseating, even with sexy Drew Barrymore playing something of a horror-movie answer to Holly Golightly, relocating from New York City to Los Angeles but finding out she's being stalked by a murderous look-alike.
Poor Sally Kellerman, a quirky actress of great acclaim in the '70s, is reduced here to a paltry supporting role, and Barrymore's leading man George Newbern is the worst type of sitcom actor, always pausing for a laugh after every line.
The former ET star is looking good in this enjoyably foolish horror yarn that features a double dose of Drew.
Drew looks great, especially in a party scene where she is suddenly taken over by the evil spirit of her doppelganger and starts performing an erotic dance routine that's hot enough to make E.T. phone home for a big pack of bromide pills !
The climax is a hoot, with the true nature of Drew's double being revealed in a blaze of slimy animatronic special effects.Sophisticated viewers should probably look elsewhere, but if you are a fan of daft horrors, the palatable Ms Barrymore, or both, then you'd better see it a double times - or more....
See Donnie Darko instead if you want a creepy Drew Barrymore film, and if you want to see another, skip this and see Darko again.The treatment of the Doppelganger legend is absolutely criminal as well.
This is just an excuse to make a B film to go straight to video and suck some life out of people at Blockbuster.What makes any of these people think the acting here was praiseworthy?
"Doppelganger: The Evil Within" is a watchable, if slightly disappointing affair.**SPOILERS**Moving to Los Angeles, Holly Gooding, (Drew Barrymore) takes a roommate position with Patrick Highsmith, (George Newbern) an aspiring writer.
She starts bringing him along as she investigates her past and reveals that she has a doppelganger, a ghostly twin that is haunting her and has confused each other.
The film is filled with all sorts of images, such as the continuous times the sunglasses-clad Drew doppelganger is seen standing in the window of the deserted mansion or outside a café and the eerie scene where the hero follows her into a culvert that add a genuine weirdness.
There are all sorts of surreal dream sequences, where she's taking showers in blood or the hero entering the apartment to find it trashed, her crucified to the wall and the doppelganger coming after him with a knife that really sticks in the mind for good reason.
These help to make the film watchable.The Bad News: This here is a disappointment, and there are several reasons for this.
The first half is where most of it's good parts come from there, and it just drags out until the ending, and is filled with scenes that go on and on without getting to any conclusion.
This makes the ending half of the film incredibly slow and dull.
She has some sort of spells at times, which makes it seem like she is being possessed.
All of these are brought up and certainly plausible, and while some things are explained near the end of the movie, the fact that there is a lot still unsure of and that is quite hard to get away with.
These are big problems in the film and really lower the film, despite their not being a lot of problems with it.The Final Verdict: It's a real disappointment, especially as it's got potential and a couple good moments, but the majority of the time, this is a really dull film.
The plot was weird, Drew Barrymore and DC making out was awkward for both of them.
Drews acting was dodgy in places but this could be down to her life at the time.
that weird animatronic red skeleton thing looked just like it was out of filmschool, which is OK i guess but it could have been more.
It was very confusing as to when it was the Doppelganger weird thing or when it was DC-or was it Dennis all the time?
In the scenes with Patrick if it was Dennis as the Doppelganger then I think Patrick would notice.The music was OK but obtrusive in places, the whole orchestral score seemed to be revolving around a theme but this theme was overdone.A big mix of lots of blood and gratuitus shots of Drew nude.
The doppelganger split at the end was like...
Certainly ridiculous, but a sweet idea and actually very coherent to the story in a strange way.Is the point of a movie to be logical or is it to be entertaining or communicate on an emotional level?
I'm looking for other movies this person may have done (with more experience)..
The Music, Drew Barrymore, and That's It.
It got all the writer-directing-his-story kind of bad syndromes !
You may forgive (Avi Nesher) only because he wanted to create a very special horror/thriller movie, and strangely..
I have a theory myself that Drew Barrymore's character is whether a schizophrenic alien or Siamese twins from outer space !!
Not bad for a low budget horror where anything goes, but did it entertain you as it mainly and only wants ?
As seeing Barrymore bends over, in good or lousy movie, is a real joy apart !But earnestly, heed making (Sally Kellerman)'s character as former nun who's working now as the head of sex phone office and the only one who knows what Doppelganger means, and making (George Newbern)'s character as a former writer of short stories who's working now as scriptwriter of low horror movies..
It could be a fair looking from the movie at itself !
(or good intentions to present what's higher, that had gone wrong ?!) (Avi Nesher) wanted a different kind of movie, and he actually did it.
However its ambition wasn't fulfilled as it should be, as the only fully fulfilled things here were : Kaczmarek's super music, and Drew Barrymore's sweet body !
Like the movie's own twist my review also got one as I believe (Doppelganger) made it to be a trashy classic (Yes, some trash can be classic too) with certain personality that's forever : horrific, sexy, deficient, incomprehensible.
To live longer than its common age as a low horror movie.
Drew Barrymore, Patrick Highsmith, Leslie Hope, and Sally Kellerman are excellent actors.
The scenes where Patrick looked Holly up and down like some sort of objectifier, those was just weird.
Drew Barrymore is very hot.
But what was that scene where Patrick followed Holly into a cesspool and Mr. Gooding attacked him?