"Doppelganger," directed by Avi Nesher, is a strange, delightfully off-kilter, and profoundly underrated mystical thriller from the 1990s—one of those films that burrows into your brain and refuses to leave, no matter how many times you try to shake it off. Released exactly a year after Katt Shea’s sultry erotic thriller "Poison Ivy," in which a teenage Drew Barrymore shed her child-star skin and proved she was all grown up, "Doppelganger" arrived like a shadowy afterthought. It bombed spectacularly at the box office, earning a collective shrug from critics who seemed too busy chasing the next big thing to notice its peculiar charms. Yet, through the miracle of home video rentals in the pre-streaming era, it clawed its way back, not only recouping its modest budget but quietly morphing into a cult favorite. It’s the kind of movie that thrives in that hazy "so bad it’s good" territory, but here’s the twist: "Doppelganger" isn’t really bad at all. It’s good—quirkily, unapologetically good—in ways that sneak up on you like the film’s own elusive antagonist. The movie kicks off with a gut-punch of a scene: Barrymore’s character, Holly Gooding, unleashes a brutal attack on her mother in a dimly lit Manhattan apartment, the kind of violence that’s raw and unflinching, shot with a voyeuristic intimacy that immediately sets your nerves on edge. But hold on—it’s not quite what it seems, as the story will teasingly reveal later. And in a meta flourish that’s equal parts cathartic and creepy, the victim is played by Jaid Barrymore, Drew’s real-life mother. No accident there; the early '90s were a turbulent time for the young actress, fresh off her own battles with addiction and personal demons. This opening feels like a cinematic therapy session, a way to exorcise ghosts on celluloid. Barrymore, just 17 during filming, pours everything into it—vulnerability laced with feral intensity—proving once again why she was the era’s go-to for roles that danced on the knife-edge between innocence and menace. At first glance, "Doppelganger" might strike you as a '90s riff on Brian De Palma’s "Sisters," that 1972 masterpiece of psychological horror where conjoined twins and split identities unravel into bloody chaos. Both films toy with duality, doppelgängers as harbingers of doom, and the blurred line between sanity and madness. But Nesher, an Israeli-born filmmaker with a knack for blending highbrow ideas with lowbrow thrills, doesn’t just homage De Palma—he subverts him. Where "Sisters" is a sleek, Hitchcockian puzzle, "Doppelganger" veers wildly into uncharted territory. It starts as a taut erotic thriller, all lingering glances and charged tension in rain-slicked Los Angeles streets, but soon spirals into nuclear kitsch. The plot logic? It limps along on crutches, occasionally tripping over its own feet in a frenzy of improbable twists. And by the first act’s end, it’s doing an enthusiastic tango toward Italian giallo territory—think Dario Argento’s fever-dream visuals, with crimson-soaked shadows and operatic screams echoing through anonymous urban sprawl. Holly, implicated in her mother’s murder (or is she?), flees the Big Apple for the sun-bleached sprawl of L.A., where she crashes into the life of Patrick Highsmith (George Newbern), a wide-eyed aspiring screenwriter scraping by with a spare room to rent. Newbern, best known at the time for his boy-next-door charm in "Father of the Bride," brings a rumpled everyman appeal to Patrick—a guy who’s equal parts romantic fool and accidental detective. He takes Holly in, drawn to her enigmatic allure, but soon notices the cracks: fleeting blackouts, whispered arguments with thin air, and a shadowy figure that seems to mirror her every move. Is it a stalker? A hallucination? Or something far more primal, lurking in the recesses of Holly’s fractured psyche? As Patrick digs deeper, aided by his sharp-tongued ex-girlfriend Elizabeth (Leslie Hope, channeling a no-nonsense '90s heroine), we peel back layers of Holly’s backstory. There’s her institutionalized brother, Fred (Dennis Christopher), who offed their father in a fit of rage, leaving the family cursed by whispers of hereditary madness. And hovering over it all is the specter of that opening kill—did Holly snap, or is she the victim of a malevolent force wearing her face? What elevates "Doppelganger" beyond its B-movie trappings is Nesher’s refusal to play it safe. The first two acts are a masterclass in slow-burn suspense: Barrymore’s Holly is a whirlwind of contradictions—seductive yet skittish, playful yet haunted—her wide-eyed gaze pulling you into her orbit even as red flags wave furiously. The romance with Patrick simmers with awkward charm, a rom-com detour amid the horror that humanizes the stakes. Newbern’s earnest befuddlement grounds the escalating absurdity; their banter crackles with '90s wit, laced with double entendres that nod to the era’s obsession with sexual awakening. But just when you think you’ve got the genre pegged—maybe a supernatural slasher or a dissociative identity disorder drama—the film flips the script. It borrows from giallo’s baroque excess: garish lighting that bathes rooms in electric blue and arterial red, sound design that weaponizes silence and sudden stabs of synth, and a killer’s POV that disorients like a funhouse mirror. Yet, for all its genre-hopping glee, "Doppelganger" isn’t flawless. The pacing stutters in the middle, bogged down by exposition dumps that feel like plot cheat codes. Some twists strain credulity—why does no one call the cops sooner? —and the dialogue occasionally veers into cheese territory, with lines like "You’re not yourself… or are you?" delivered deadpan enough to elicit groans or giggles. Critics at the time, buried under a deluge of glossy blockbusters, dismissed it outright; Variety called it "a derivative mess," while The New York Times barely glanced its way. Box office? A dismal $2.2 million against a $3 million budget, dooming it to direct-to-video purgatory. But that’s where the magic happened. On VHS shelves, it found its tribe: late-night renters seeking something edgier than "Weekend at Bernie’s" but trashier than "Se7en." Fan forums in the dial-up days buzzed with theories— is it multiple personalities or a literal curse? Barrymore superfans dissected her wardrobe, from ripped fishnets to oversized sweaters, symbols of her post-teen rebellion. Fast-forward to today, and "Doppelganger" simmers in the cult canon, ripe for rediscovery on Blu-ray (shoutout to those limited-edition releases that finally gave it HD glory). It’s a time capsule of '90s anxieties: the commodification of trauma, the allure of reinvention in Tinseltown, the fear that your darker self might just step out of the mirror one day. Barrymore, riding high off "Poison Ivy" and prepping for "Scream," uses Holly to reclaim her narrative—turning victimhood into verve. Nesher, ever the chameleon, infuses it with his outsider’s eye, blending Hollywood gloss with Eastern European fatalism (echoes of his Israeli roots in the fatalistic family curse). And oh, those final 15 minutes. Few films prepare you for a pivot this audacious. What starts as psychological cat-and-mouse erupts into full-throated body horror, courtesy of an uncredited nod to David Cronenberg’s visceral obsessions. Limbs twist in impossible angles, flesh warps like melting wax, and the line between self and other dissolves in a symphony of squelches and screams. It’s infernal, surreal, a fever-dream finale that leaves you exhilarated and unmoored. Suddenly, all the earlier kitsch clicks into place—not flaws, but deliberate fever. "Doppelganger" isn’t just a thriller; it’s a portal to the uncanny, a reminder that the scariest monsters wear your face. In an age of algorithm-fed blockbusters, films like this feel like contraband—raw, unpolished, alive with the thrill of the unknown. Underrated? Absolutely. But watch it alone on a stormy night, and you’ll see: it’s not just good. It’s unforgettable, a doppelgänger of its own making, haunting the edges of your memory long after the credits roll. If "Poison Ivy" was Barrymore’s seduction of the screen, "Doppelganger" is her exorcism—a wild, weird ride worth every bumpy mile.