Though part of the J-horror explosion can be credited to director Kiyoshi "no relation to Akira" Kurosawa—a prolific manufacturer of low-key ghost stories and psychological thrillers like Cure, Seance, and Pulse—his style still seems removed from his peers, chillier and less aggressive in its effects. That distance grows even more pronounced with Doppelgänger, a peculiar departure that comes on like a horror film, then quickly spins off into a surreal screwball comedy, somewhere between Dr. Dolittle and Brian De Palma's Raising Cain. As a director who specializes in eerie atmospherics, Kurosawa doesn't take naturally to comedy, and he confesses as much during the DVD interview. But he stakes the film on an elaborate multiple-split-screen gimmick that deepens the metaphysical quandary of a man at war with himself, and also allows Kurosawa's favorite lead actor, Kôji Yakusho, to bounce merrily from one end of a split personality to another.
In a dual role, Yakusho plays a weak-willed scientist consumed with his latest invention: A "Human Body Chair" that performs all its user's motor functions, à la Doc Ock in Spiderman. (In the hilarious promotional video, an animated figure holds an open book with one mechanical hand while scratching his head quizzically with the other.) When his exact double appears out of the blue, Yakusho seizes up in terror, but after his supernatural twin continues to make appearances, he has to figure out how to grapple with this new development. In many ways, Yakusho faces his reverse image, a cocky, malevolent creature who isn't afraid to mix it up to get what he wants. Aided by Hiromi Nagasaku, a young woman who lost her brother to a doppelgänger, Yakusho initially tries to manipulate the situation to his advantage, but his seemingly indestructible double has other plans.
Doppelgänger never amounts to more than an amusing curiosity—it's the sound of a great director clearing his throat—but its playful nature gives Kurosawa and Yakusho plenty of opportunities for light experimentation. For his part, Kurosawa uses his split-screen effects as a clever way to address his hero's duality and hoodwink the audience by deliberately confusing the "good" Yakusho with the "bad" one, especially as the differences between the two become more negligible. To some extent, Doppelgänger serves as the comic B-side to Cure, Kurosawa's masterful thriller about the transference of evil from one person to the next; here, evil is the liberating result of being unbound by the responsibilities and consequences that keep ordinary people in line. In Kurosawa's mind, comedy and horror come from the same place: When there's a slight disruption in the social order, anything can happen.