It's not uncommon for a filmmaker to follow up his biggest success with something a little more personal, cashing in his newfound clout with a film no studio (or even wealthy independent financier) would touch unless they could market it as "From the director of _____ " to make up the difference. Rarely do these films become major successes, but if they are at least well-received, the filmmaker tends to continue the "one for me, one for them" approach, more or less, making everyone happy in the process. But in David Cronenberg's case, after making back-to-back commercial hits (1983's The Dead Zone, and the even more successful remake of The Fly in 1986) he followed them up with Dead Ringers, a non-horror film that ended up coming a bit short of making back its production budget, but nevertheless opened at #1 and earned rave reviews. He has made ten features since, and while many flirt with genre elements, he has yet to make a full-fledged return to traditional horror feature filmmaking - and at this point I'm not sure he ever will.

Not that anything he made would be considered "traditional"; even the aforementioned hits stood apart from their peers (Fly more than Dead Zone) with peculiar character beats, careful pacing, and of course, at least in Fly's case, his fascination with "body horror" as it has come to be known. But those are Screen Gems-level bland compared to the likes of The Brood and Rabid (my personal two favorites, for what it's worth), which might sound conventional on paper, but (as with all of his films, horror or not) offer a distinct - and deeply personal - style that make them unique. Like Tim Burton, Cronenberg uses many of the same key crew members time and time again - the DP (a relationship that began on Dead Ringers, in fact), the composer, the costume designer... but UNLIKE Burton, his films never devolved into self-parody. Howard Shore, Denise Cronenberg, etc. all bring their A-game each time out, not phone it in and do what worked before like Danny Elfman and the others do for Burton more often than not. The thing that ties them together is that they're almost nothing alike.

But apart from Fast Company, all of his features from his debut Shivers up until The Fly were within the genre, rightfully earning him a place in the hallowed "Masters of Horror" group along with Carpenter and Romero. And unsurprisingly, Dead Ringers was thought to be a horror film as well when it was in production, and marketed as one as well (when I first saw it - in 2007! - I was still under this impression). No one can really be blamed for the misconception; Cronenberg himself points out on the bonus features on the new Blu-ray (hitting shelves today) that movies about twins are either broad comedies* like The Parent Trap, or horror movies where one is evil. No one would ever assume Cronenberg was making a broad comedy, so it wouldn't have been a stretch to think that the director of The Fly was following it up with an ambitious movie about a murderous doctor and his innocent twin brother, which is what the trailer somewhat promises.

However, it's far more interesting than that (though I have little doubt Cronenberg could make a terrific film with that premise), and apart from a nightmare scene, completely removed from the horror genre, to the point where even "thriller" (the buzzword for any horror movie that's trying not be one) would even be misleading. No, it's a straight-up drama, one that makes me feel a bit sad more than scared - Beverly's pathetic repetition of "Ellie..." in the film's final moments is legitimately heartbreaking. That said, women might feel slightly different about the film's scariness due to the traumatic gynecology elements, which are limited to a pair of brief scenes where the spiraling Beverly (the more emotional and thus "nicer" of the two) misuses some equipment during exams. The pained face of the patient in the first and horrified reactions of his fellow doctors in the second are the extent of their "graphic" nature, perhaps disappointing those who took a look at the instruments Beverly designed for this DAVID CRONENBERG FILM! and had some perverse hope of seeing them in action, They're basically the three seashells of the '80s - you end up being insanely curious how the hell they work, and it's a shame Cronenberg couldn't be roped into a special feature for the Blu-ray where he explains how each one would be used.

No, those brief moments aside, this is a drama and character study, and a fascinating/terrific one at that. The twins, Beverly and Elliot (who is a few millimeters taller) are not Siamese, but they might as well be, sharing everything (yes, this means women) and often changing roles when it suits one's (OK, usually Elliot's) needs. They even do it during an exam, when Beverly realizes his patient Claire (Geneviève Bujold) has a "trifurcated cervix" (three openings in her uterus) and instantly excuses himself to show Elliot while she's still on the table. Elliot is on his way out for an important meeting to secure funding for their research, but he's too fascinated by the anomaly, and thus quickly puts on scrubs to continue the exam (as Beverly) while Beverly takes Elliot's place at the meeting ("YOU were terrific," Beverly later informs Elliot when the later returns home and asks how it went). Beverly begins to fall in love with Claire (who is unaware of the switcheroo for a period; luckily for her Elliot isn't much interested in her as a person), and thus the conflict begins - these two men have never had a fight of any concern, and now Beverly is breaking away, much to Elliot's chagrin - as much as he seems like the one who's all together and doesn't need the "weaker" Beverly, it's really the other way around.

Interestingly, as the film goes and the wedge between them grows larger, it gets harder to tell which one is which, culminating in a jaw-dropping shot where one follows the other around their apartment in almost perfect sync, both so far gone from their drug habits that it doesn't even really matter who's who. Cronenberg doesn't often show them both in the frame (when they do it's a remarkable effect given the pre-CGI period, using an early form of motion-controlled camera and a gifted actor who could keep it straight), so for the scenes where it's just one of them you often have to rely on tiny physical changes in Irons' performance to tell right off the bat if he's Elliot or Beverly (or one pretending to be the other). Their hair changes slightly, but since they spend so much time impersonating one another, particularly in the back half when Beverly becomes addicted to pills and Elliot has to take his place on the job more and more often, even that doesn't help all that much. Elliot is colder and more precise with his movements, whereas Beverly has a slight weariness and even slighter childlike innocence to his expressions - that's pretty much all you can use to know who's who in a number of scenes. The entire context of a scene changes if you think it's one when it's really the other, so it's an impossibly difficult job Irons had, and a goddamn travesty he wasn't recognized for it (as is almost always the case for "genre" films with remarkable performances, he got a Saturn Award nomination instead).

In fact I can't help but wonder if Cronenberg saw this slight (Irons would be rewarded by the Academy two years later for Reversal of Fortune, and some believe they were just retroactively apologizing) as part of the reason that he hasn't jumped back into horror. Not that he's chasing Oscars or anything, but when he does such excellent work for a non-horror film and the Academy snubs it, it wouldn't be unreasonable for him to see it as a good excuse to further shed himself of his "master of horror" status, by focusing on non-genre material and building a name for himself as a dramatic filmmaker. After a run of seven classic horror films, he hasn't made one since - Naked Lunch and Spider, like Dead Ringers, inch close enough to the genre's loosely defined lines that some will count them as horror, but stack them against The Brood or Videodrome and they're, well, Oscar bait. Then there is Existenz, which shares plot similarities with Videodrome, but is never "scary" by any usual standard, sticking closer to traditional sci-fi elements even with a video game plot that could easily lend itself to any manner of terrors. No, most of his work over the past 25-30 years is more in line with Dead Ringers - unusual as they may be, they're character driven dramas buoyed by fantastic performances and, more often than not, an exploration of sexuality (at this point, a Cronenberg film without a graphic sex scene would be like a Michael Bay film without an explosion). Some are better than others, of course (Cosmopolis was unbearable to me), but they're never uninteresting, regardless of their genre - and whatever label you slap on the films, they often transcend it anyway.

So what if Ringers was a bust? I know it didn't set the box office on fire, but it turned out great and we're still watching it 30 years later, courtesy of a a Scream Factory Blu-ray (ironically, the first of his films to come along their, er, horror label - Rabid is coming next week). However, if it DIDN'T get that acclaim and fan support, would he have quickly returned to the genre? Would '90s horror, often bland and forgettable (at least in the first half of the decade), have benefited from his presence if he, like Wes Craven with Music of the Heart, only made the one detour and went back to his comfort zone? It's impossible to know; I can't ever see him making a slasher or ghost movie, and given his opposition to repeating himself (indeed, a 2000's film called Painkillers fell apart partly because he started to see it as a repeat of earlier work) it's possible there's nothing left in horror that would interest him while also not feeling like a retread. Worse, as his departure grows further and further (we're now talking thirty years since The Fly), there will be a considerable amount of pressure to deliver - not that he'd be unable to live up to those expectations, but it might just not be worth the scrutiny, especially when he can still make things like Maps to the Stars or A Dangerous Method. He tosses us a bone every now and then with a short film (like The Nest), and he made the Fly opera a few years back, so he's still got it in him - but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the rest of his career played out without another feature that might make the cover of Rue Morgue.

But MAN would I love to see him come back to "us"! I know he tried making a Fly sequel of sorts a few years back, only for Fox to balk, but otherwise he's not usually the type to announce films that never see the light of day, like Spielberg and Del Toro, and whenever he talks about future projects, they don't sound like a "return" to the genre he swears he hasn't left behind. Not too long ago, Carpenter told a story about how they used to be friends, but now got the impression Cronenberg felt he was above him - I hear things like that and start wondering if he just says he might do horror again just to keep from having to go back on his word should a new project come along that excites him, even though he's not actively pursuing any. If he doesn't want to make them anymore, that's his prerogative of course; he keeps getting his projects funded and earning rave reviews, so it's not like there's any financial incentive to go back. If and when he does, though, I just hope his enthusiasm matches ours.

* Incidentally, this was orignally called simply Twins, but Ivan Reitman - who produced Cronenberg's earlier films - wanted the name for his Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy, and bought it out. Personally, I think Dead Ringers is the better title anyway.