Based on the 2018 novel by Ian Reid (who co-wrote the screenplay with director Garth Davis). Enemy has what on paper appears to be a formula for success. This gives Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, two of this generation’s great actors (with American accents), meaty roles and the opportunity to meet face to face on screen. It’s full of dramatic tension, moral quandaries and vibrant visual flair, as Mátyás Erdelyi’s cinematography feels at once grandiose and claustrophobic in its scale.
But despite all efforts, these pieces do not come together to create a complete puzzle. Despite solid performances from Ronan and Mescal, they can’t salvage the weak (and sometimes shoddy) script, which at times feels abandoned. Black mirror episode and serves its twists and turns more than its characters.
EnemyThe almost futuristic setting is close enough to our own to see the connective tissue between the present and the future, but still far enough away to feel abstract. Set in the bleak “Midwest 2065”, a dystopian future where water and cultivable land are limited resources; The earth is becoming an increasingly hostile place to live. Erdely’s cinematography captures the beauty of the quieter moments between married couple Junior (Mezcal) and Hen (Ronan), taking full advantage of their isolation or the devastation that a fire or tornado can bring to an area devastated by drought with no end in sight. Standing in for the Midwest, Australia is breathtaking on screen and at times Enemy may seem like a period piece rather than a drama set decades in the future.
Saoirse Ronan in the movie Enemy. (Photo: Amazon Studios)
But sometimes elements of science fiction creep in. There are futuristic cars, the joint efforts of the OuterMore corporation to create and maintain an entire planet within the confines of a space station, and “human substitutes” – artificial intelligence that in practice works like a clone and can, under certain circumstances, replace humans – exist.
For a significant part Enemy, these elements are in the background while much of its setting, scale, and human drama take center stage. Junior and Hen’s marriage had already seen better days by the time Terrence (Underground Railroad(Aaron Pierre) shows up on their doorstep. Terrence works for OuterMore, one of the corporations that more or less replaces the US government today, and Junior is shortlisted to be sent into space for two years to help build a space station designed to save humanity. It doesn’t matter that Junior, whose family lived in the farmhouse he and Hen have called home for generations, never entered the lottery to work on the space station and has no interest in going into space.
Pierre brings a casual cool to Terrence that can make him seem friendly one moment and menacing the next, a sign of the chameleonic whims of all three future characters: at one point, Junior says he doesn’t want to go into space (especially when he recognizes Hen may go with him), what seems like an invitation turns into a threat as Terrence notes that the invitation is more like a draft (mandatory military conscription).
But OuterMore isn’t entirely without sympathy for what her plans for Junior will do to Hen. To compensate for this, he will provide Hen with a replacement man, a junior, so that she will not be alone during her husband’s absence. To do this, Terrence will move into their home, run a series of tests on Junior, and observe the couple to gather enough data to ensure that the human surrogate is as close a mirror of Junior as possible. For Hen, it will be as if her husband never left.
Paul Mescal in the film Enemy. (Photo: Amazon Studios)
The semantics of the mission involved—we’re given limited details about what OuterMore wants to do, and even fewer scenes showing what it entails—mean far less than what their presentation means for Junior and Hen. But the constant push and pull as each side tries to gain the upper hand in this new, confusing triad is frustrating, as interactions and motivations between characters change with little or no through line.
One minute Junior and Terrence are getting along like long-lost buddies since Hen is away. The next minute, Hen is snuggling up to the man who changed the decor of their home, while Junior is on the outskirts, left to spy through a hole in the bathroom wall. In one scene, Junior and Hen can’t keep their hands off each other; the next time they were almost at each other’s throats. They are each asked intimate details about their personal lives and grievances against each other; Junior, for example, can’t stand the way Hen plays the piano, so the piano sits in the basement collecting dust. At one point, Hen describes his fantasy of finally leaving Junior while Junior rants about how much he hates the way people chew their food.
In the back of your mind looms the shadow of something that is a little wrong, that could make Enemy more rewarding on repeat viewings, but it loses some of the intended emotional weight. The constant bait and switch makes it difficult to understand their motivation at any given moment. Is Terrence trying to help Hen and Junior or is he pushing them further away? Does he want to invade their lives or leave behind a disaster that is all too common in their corner of the world? Is he really interested in one of them and intends to displace the other? After a while, it no longer feels like it’s keeping the audience guessing, but more like the writers don’t even really know which direction it lands.
Aaron Pierre in the film “Enemy”. (Photo: Amazon Studios)
Ronan and Mescal make the best of what they’re given, and Pierre seems to be having fun playing the proverbial game of destruction in a marriage already in crisis. But the zigzag movement EnemyTrying to act on a high wire serves the plot more than the characters.
Striving to use science fiction to enhance the human drama at its core, Enemy stumbles at almost every turn, choosing obvious ways to explore concepts already explored in numerous (and much better) films and shows before. The result is mostly forgettable: it’s not as interesting as it sounds and doesn’t carry as much emotional punch, but at least it looks nice.
Enemy is playing in select theaters now and will be available on Prime Video at a later date.
Michelle Jaworski is an entertainment journalist, film and television critic based in Brooklyn. You can find her at Twitter And Blue sky.