7. Arachnophobia - Enemy
2014 saw the release of two challenging movies about dopplegangers, Richard Aoyade's The Double starring Jesse Eisenberg and Canadian director Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, adapted from José Saramago's novel The Double. Jake Gyllanhaal's performance(s) sits at the opposite spectrum to his animated character in Nightcrawler - a restrained, understated and introverted delivery which reflects the internalized angst of Adam Bell, a history professor who discovers his doppleganger in a cheap film he watches and sets out to track him down. Like Villeneuve's Incendies and to a lesser extent Prisoners (in which Gyllenhaal also starred), Enemy is a puzzlebox of a movie, with Lynchian nightmarish visions lurking in the shadows. The film's underlying sense of dread and uncertainty culminates in a chilling closing scene in which a giant tarantula manifests itself in a room. Cryptic and unnerving, it's a fine moment of "pure cinema" matched in 2014 only by Under The Skin. Speaking of which...