Good Low Budget and Independent Flicks
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 1, 2026 02:34
VIEWED: 28778
PAGE 22 of 30
MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ENEMY (Seriously, don't read these if you haven't seen it and you think you'd have any desire to see it):
I watched it again. I don't think I've ever done that and watched the same movie twice in one day. I'm going to now put a TL;DR here, which is repeated at the very bottom of this post and is my final assessment of what this movie actually was after my 2nd viewing. I'd consider the rest of my post "showing the work" to get to this answer.
FINAL RATING: 8.5/10, but this is a very subjective rating on my part. I don't recommend Enemy (2013) to anyone because most people who watch it are going to hate it. Of that I have no doubt. But if you love it, you're really going to love it.
TL;DR
"Enemy"...
Yanno what I think...
I think this was a story about a man that got so good at manipulating everyone around him that before the movie started he got it into his head to use manipulation techniques on himself and was experimenting, possibly with a combination of hypnosis and psychedelic drugs like mushrooms or LSD with the goal of either killing off or walling off a part of himself that he rightfully didn't find desirable, and up until that point had no ability to control. Not only the memory and guilt of his infidelity, but the lust and desire for the infidelity itself as well...
And I think when the movie began, he had already somehow accomplished this. For at least long enough to have gotten close enough back in with his wife that it looked like he probably was going to be able to save the marriage if he played his cards right.
But this version of him was really jealous of the idea that the other version had sex with his wife (to the viewer's knowledge at least, this had not happened up to this point). And he used that belief as justification to take the "other" version's mistress out on a date and have his way with her as revenge. (Possibly emphasizing beyond him just kind of being a Dickhead to this point that he had managed to bury his sinful Lust, with equally sinful Wrath). Petty and what amounts to total nonsense if you were still looking at this movie as if both Jakes were two different people as almost everyone certainly was the first time viewing it.
My point is, until there was a rage inside of "Dickhead" and a desire for revenge, it didn't appear that this version of Jake had any real recollection let alone remorse for cheating on his wife. I don't think whatever he did to himself left a great personality behind for his wife to deal with overall, but the guilt of his infidelity as well as the desire for more was successfully gone.
... until it wasn't.
And our mild-mannered "good guy" protagonist comes out of the woodwork of the deep, dark recesses of Jake's suppressed mind. The "good guy" version is actually the "bad guy".
Sure... he was the suppressed guilt. He was the part of Jake that his wife literally sat up and took notice of as she could immediately tell that he had changed and he was genuinely sorry for what he did. The part of Jake that she could believe actually felt sorry for what he did and would do anything to make it up to her.
But at the same time, he was also the suppressed lust. Though old boy "Dickhead" never had it in him to give his wife a genuine apology, he probably would have remained faithful to her for the rest of his life.
But once our "hero" Jake takes over and says he was sorry and had himself a good cry, it didn't take very long for his entire persona to shift right back to where it was before he got caught cheating. New secret plans to go out and fuck around on her at another meeting had fallen literally into his lap, and were waiting for him all the while, and his wife again became the spider.
If that is the movie I just watched twice, or something very close to it, well played, Sirs.
Even if it isn't, it probably gets the
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FINAL SPOILER ALERT FOR ENEMY:
One more thing I thought of regarding the spiders. Though they make no mention or even any hint that I could tell that Upper Class/Rich ex-Hollywood (possibly wannabe) Starlet Mom was a "Black Widow" herself, she's wearing all black and there is a LOT of black in the decor surrounding her in Isabella Rossellini's only on-screen scene. And there is never an appearance or even mention of Jake's father in the movie.
Perhaps there's even deeper levels here and our boy Jake saw his mom do something pretty heinous when he was too young to really process it, and subconsciously he worries that one day his own wife will have enough of his bullshit and do the same thing to him. Or maybe he didn't see anything and was completely oblivious to it when he was young, but once it happened a few more times a lot of people started whispering things that I would imagine would be quite damaging to a young impressionable mind when they're all saying it about his mother.
It would easily work into the story and would at least put a 2x multiplier on the meaning of the spiders in the film. Now we're not only talking about the spider luring him into the web (his subconscious feelings about being married to anyone in general, and not specifically his wife), but now we're also talking about the woman he married having her way with him while he's stuck in her web until the eventual day finally comes around where he is decapitated and eaten by her in the end. And with the amount of guilt he feels for what he does he seems to be content resigning himself to that fate because he feels that he deserves it.
I mean... come on...
I just went back to look at that scene again on YT to see if it really was as black as I remember it.
Just look at that thumbnail.
Mom's all dressed in black. There's black on the outskirts (and you can see the framed movie poster of Mom when she was young on the left side).
But it's all bright and lit up white in the center of the room. Jake is sitting in the Black Widow's den, but the only reason he's safe is because he's her son. I think those black lights above the dining room table might even signify her fallen prey. Do I count 1, 2, 3 dead husbands hanging up there?
And all that white behind them, right behind the DINING ROOM TABLE is her Webbing.
Take a look at what's back there in the White. I see shelves with paint and brushes on them. Easels... Canvas... Ornate picture frames waiting to be fit over the finished work.
The spider, always weaving her web.
And then... On the flip side... I don't recall his pregnant wife he cheated on wearing much of anything besides white. The mistress wears black. All the time. Blue jeans at times, but always with a black top. Sometimes wearing a sexy black dress.
Maybe this goes even one step further and insinuates that he's following exactly in his father's footsteps and he will end up just like his father did. And it also means that he is destined to damage his wife so badly that he will turn what is only his projections onto her into reality, and that was what happened to his mother.
After you realize what is really going on in this movie and Jake's wife doesn't come off as an alien life form or A.I. program that doesn't quite understand how human interactions work for saying the things that she does when she says them, she actually comes off as quite a sweet woman and somebody that most any man would proudly call a wife. Maybe they're saying that Isabella Rosselini's character was once just like her, until her cheater of a husband turned her heart cold and after years of emotional abuse, betrayal and infidelity she killed him... and then found out that she kind of liked it and made it a regular thing, especially since it seems to have been quite lucrative. Perhaps my earlier assumptions were wrong and the reason he
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Another quote from the movie, which was just words put on the screen in the beginning of the movie and never quoted by one of the characters stuck out to me for that very reason, and I rewound and paused it just so I could take it in before the movie started...
"Chaos is order yet undeciphered."
And they did not attribute that quote to anyone... So I just looked it up on Google:
Quote:
Understanding the concept
Order within chaos:
The phrase suggests that chaos isn't a lack of order, but rather an unknown or complex form of it.
Limited perception:
Our inability to grasp this underlying order is due to the limitations of our perception or current knowledge. We see things from a subjective viewpoint, which can make complex systems appear chaotic.
A call to decipher:
The phrase challenges people to look beyond the surface of apparent disorder and seek the hidden structure or meaning within it.
Examples and Context
The film Enemy:
The quote appears in the movie Enemy (2013), which explores themes of duality and identity. It's used to set up the idea that the protagonist's seemingly chaotic life might have a hidden, underlying pattern.
Philosophical implications:
The idea has philosophical roots, such as in José Saramago's The Double (from which the film is adapted), and relates to the idea that what seems messy is just order that hasn't been deciphered.
Figurative meaning:
In a broader sense, it can apply to any complex situation, like a messy system or historical event, where deeper insight could reveal a hidden order
Seems as though the philosophical idea itself has been around a long time, but the direct quote was made up by somebody who was involved with this movie, or at least Google's AI didn't see fit to attribute it to anyone or mention that it was used somewhere else in those exact words before Enemy was released.
If I'm right about all of this, than bringing order to chaos is what I just did with my Thursday night.
How'd you spend yours?
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For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
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the Fool 2014
Dima Nikitin, a plumber, is a municipal repair-crew chief living in an unnamed Russian town
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8hrjxj
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Shifty Living in Britain at the End of the Twentieth Century...a movie and tv series, a 2025 five-part British documentary television series created by Adam Curtis
or
Africa Blood and Guts from 1966, Africa Addio the Italian mondo documentary film
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2004 Darwin's Nightmare
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American Factory Trailer
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So nobody's ever seen Enemy?
I'm actually glad my TV was small enough where the thumbnail for the movie poster wasn't really decipherable. It would have really blunted the impact of one scene in particular that made me think this movie was going somewhere completely different on the first viewing. Possibly many more.
I really do prefer knowing as little as I possibly can going into a movie, and taking the word of somebody who's opinion I respect, both on their taste in movies and just life in general, before devoting my time to watching one.
Going in blind is the only way you can have the genuine experience.
Movie trailers are for movies I know I'm never going to watch, or for digging up relics of my past.
I would love to hear what anybody else thinks about Enemy if they have already seen it or they decide to devote the time to watching it.
I still haven't watched a video explaining it or looking up anything written about it online. I haven't made up my mind whether or not I want devote more time to unraveling it all on my own, and I see no reason to rush it. I don't want to be tainted by theories of other people who have already spread their theory out there, but I'd enjoy hearing the thoughts of somebody else who saw it and what they think is going on.
If it's as tightly crafted as I suspect it might have been, this is a pretty cool puzzle they made which requires you to shape all the pieces yourself and end up with a perfect rectangle without any missing, extra or overlapping pieces.
Even with all that figuring the other night, I know that I haven't succeeded in that.
I'll be pissed at myself one day if I find out that I'm giving this film way more credit than it deserves and there wasn't any care put into any sort of "puzzle" and they just threw a bunch of weird shit in any old way to make a weird movie that makes all the critic fart sniffers give it their flowery prose about how Stunning and Intellectual it was.
I don't know why, but I don't think that's the case here.
I can't remember when or how, but at some point while looking up the movie on IMDB I gleaned that the director that made this was kind of a big deal (most likely a sidebar thumbnail or something I saw when I was grabbing the link for my first post about the movie).
I heard he directed "Arrival". I know a lot of people thought very highly of that, although I've never seen it. I remember my Dad being especially impressed with it. I should ask him if he wants to watch that next and then tell him that it was the same director that did Enemy and see what he thinks when I drop that truth bomb on him.
So... I just looked now, and Denis Villeneuve did both of the recent Dune movies, Blade Runner 2049, something called Prisoners (which I definitely have to see), and a few others that I've actually heard of earlier in his career.
I've never seen one of his movies before Enemy. Never even knew his name until after I saw it, and only committed it to memory in the last 20 minutes.
Now I just have to decide if I watch Arrival next, or if I go with one of his earlier, lesser known works before I go straight to his critically acclaimed and fairly mainstream works.
This dude made my Old Man really think after he'd watched Arrival years ago. I don't exactly remember why and what he specifically said he liked about it, but I think he told me that it had the idea that because most people only know one language they are very limited in their capacity to think? Maybe something involving human beings learning the alien's language and all of the sudden it's like they're geniuses that are thinking on a higher plane than any human who hadn't learned the language. I think that's right. It's an interesting premise for sure, and I'm not surprised that would have stuck with me from some random phone conversation I h
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Good Boy - Movie Review
Independent Film Company / Shudder
https://www.screendaily.com/news/ghost-dog-horror-good-boy-acquired-fo
r-uk-ireland-theatrical-release/5207803.article
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Not low budget at $50 Million, especially not back in 2009, but probably an indie title since I can't find any major studios attached to it, and I've never heard of Summit Entertainment before... but I just watched "Knowing" with the old man today.
He thought now that we've The Surfer off of our palates, we could go back to 2009 in what could possibly be Nic Cage's last good movie. I'd never even heard of this movie before, but he liked it. Looks like it didn't do too bad in the theaters either with $180+ Million off that $50 Million budget... back in the days where that easily meant a profit over $75 Million after expenses.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_accord_2_cdt_
t_62
It was 2 hours long, but didn't feel that long.
I don't think it had all that much to say aside from some semi-sciency and semi-religiousy undertones. The predetermination vs. chaos argument that you've probably seen play out 100 times before if your viewing and/or reading habits are anything like mine. But it did it well. I think it probably said what a lot of them don't, and that there's really no reason at all why Science and God couldn't coexist. A belief I've held myself since somewhere in my 20's.
The obscenely dated CGI that probably didn't look good to audiences 16 years ago in one scene toward the very end is a tragedy in 2025, but don't let that keep you from seeing it. It's not a CGI heavy movie and the scene might be a little distracting, but at that point the movie was finished talking anyway.
Solid 7.5 out of 10. Maybe I'd give it an 8 just for Nic Cage. He went way off brand for this role, and the hilarious thing is that if there ever were a situation that would excuse the Craziest of Crazy Nic to come out, it was one of his most low-key roles I've ever seen him in.
Oh, right. It also had a young Rose Byrne in it, only several years after 28 Weeks Later had come out. Glad to see it looks as though she had a pretty decent career over the years. I'd never seen her in anything other than 28 Weeks myself. It looks like she was in every one of the Insidious movies, and I know that they're moneymakers.
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For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
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