Sam Fiske

Picked by: Sam

Why: The last of Sam’s backlog of prestige arthouse picks — Cronenberg’s most acclaimed film, a critical darling that barely made back its budget and somehow became a horror landmark anyway.

The Conversation

Sam came in a little lost — soft dialogue, no subtitles, and two Jeremy Irons performances that start out deliberately indistinguishable. He rewatched the first thirty minutes before the call just to get his bearings. “I was confused and I just started enjoying it anyway,” which is honestly a pretty good endorsement for any movie.

John, on the other hand, watched it on his big fancy Audio-Technica headphones in one unbroken sitting and came in hot. “I fucking love this movie. Phenomenal fucking movie.” He never once felt the two-hour runtime. He was also the one to connect the dots for Sam on the drug arc — how Claire’s departure triggered Beverly’s spiral, which pulled Elliot down after him. “One woman destroyed their brotherly relationship,” he said, “and she was the three uteri.”

Sean watched it in thirty-minute chunks over a few nights on the Roku, which somehow still left him gripped enough to look up the Howard Shore score on YouTube afterwards. He didn’t know Shore did Lord of the Rings until that moment, which felt like a genuine revelation. He also noted that Jeremy Irons deserves serious credit for how clearly distinct the two brothers become by the film’s second half — you start out confused, and then suddenly you just know who’s who without thinking about it.

The consensus standout: Jeremy Irons acting against himself. John put it plainly — he was essentially the only actor in two-thirds of the film, doing the straight man, the drug addict, and both at once. He got scooped out of an Oscar for this (too weird, too uncommercial), then won Best Actor the following year and thanked Cronenberg in his speech. The Chicago Film Critics gave it to him in real time, even if Roger Ebert only gave the movie two and a half stars — “a collaboration between med school and a supermarket tabloid,” which Sean argued was kind of the point.

A few highlights from the conversation worth noting: Sam floated a Cronenberg Easter egg theory — Beverly eating something oddly shaped early in the film, and whether it matched the fleshy connective tissue Claire bites in the nightmare sequence. “Is David up to some tricks here?” John went looking for the timestamp. Sean had noticed the pizza too. Nobody could confirm it, but nobody could rule it out either.

John also admitted that mid-film he briefly wondered if the twins were the same person — a Patrick Bateman-style break, one man’s full schizophrenic episode. They’re not. But the fact that the movie earns that question without ever confirming it is part of what makes it work. Sam compared their bond to Where the Red Fern Grows — one goes, the other can’t survive it. John thought that was interesting. He was right.

Sean brought up the production angle: getting Jeremy Irons in the same frame as himself was apparently groundbreaking for 1988 technology, and it holds up. The seam only shows in the first few minutes, and then your brain just accepts it. The apartment design got a mention too — sterile, muted, brutalist 80s Toronto. Sam noted that Cronenberg strips the frame of everything except Jeremy Irons, which forces you to just watch him. The only real color in the film is red, which shows up exactly when it needs to.

The Verdict

John called it his best score yet — a 90, ahead of It Happened One Night, the first film in the series to crack that threshold. Sean came in at 88. Sam gave it a 78, still processing, possibly revisiting. He was lost for a good stretch of it and is honest about that. The average lands at 85, tying They Live and Cure at the top of the Tough Flicks all-time list.

Roger Ebert gave it two and a half stars. The Chicago Film Critics gave Jeremy Irons Best Actor. The movie is in every serious top-100 horror list. 

Sam put it best: “I’m glad I watched it.”