Mickey 17 falls into an especially unconventional category: the doppelgänger film genre.

Bong Joon Ho’s latest movie, Mickey 17, is a lot of things. It’s a story about work, cloning, colonization, inequality, first contact, and the evils of capitalism. It’s a satire, a slapstick comedy, and a sci-fi epic. It also belongs to one of the rarest and strangest subgenres of film: doppelgänger movies.

Robert Pattinson plays Mickey, who signs himself up to be an “expendable” on an expedition to colonize an alien planet. This means that, if he dies, the expedition science team can simply print out another one of him and download his consciousness into it. (In a touch of director Bong’s signature visual wit, his consciousness is stored in an old brick.) When the 17th Mickey survives what seemed like certain death, he finds himself living alongside Mickey 18 — but duplicates are strictly forbidden. Hijinks ensue.

It is the law of doppelgänger movies that the doubles must be inverses of each other, personality-wise — partly as a showcase for the actor doing double duty, partly to make them easier for audiences to tell them apart, and partly to evoke the duality of identity, of ego and id. Pattinson does a superb job contrasting Mickey 17, a hesitant doormat with a wheedling voice, with the more strident Mickey 18; it’s never confusing which is which. It is also the law that these identical doubles must become locked in a dark dance with each other as they attempt to consume, assimilate, or otherwise overtake each other. Usually there’s an unwitting sexual or romantic partner entangled. This contest is sometimes resolved well, but usually not. Mickey 17 obeys all these rules.

As familiar as its tropes may seem, a true doppelgänger movie is a pretty rare find. They are a subset, or cousin, of a more popular form: the identical twin movie. An identical twin movie isn’t necessarily a doppelgänger movie, dealing with the fundamental premise of one identity split in two — although it can be. Dead Ringers and Adaptation are doppelgänger movies, but Legend and The Parent Trap are not. Those are just movies with identical twins in them.

Doppelgänger movies are often psychological thrillers, but in fact, they can be spliced with almost any genre: action, comedy, even romance. Here are some of our favorites.

Where to watch: Free with ads on Pluto TV, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Denis Villeneuve’s last truly Canadian film arrived in 2013 sandwiched between his first two Hollywood pictures, Prisoners and Sicario, and was rather overlooked. It’s an oblique, compelling story in which Jake Gyllenhaal, a mild-mannered, mopey history teacher, spots someone who looks exactly like him playing a bit part in a film, and tracks him down. Other Jake is, of course, more confident and doesn’t have Jake 1’s commitment issues; their meeting proves to be a disastrous mistake. Or does it? Enemy is haunting and thought-provoking without being overdetermined, it looks unreal — Villeneuve shoots Toronto like a sepia wasteland of alienation — and it has one of the most WTF endings ever.

Where to watch: Prime Video, Peacock, free with a library card on Hoopla and Kanopy, free with ads on Pluto TV

Although spliced with the identical twin genre, David Cronenberg’s utterly chilling 1988 masterpiece Dead Ringers might still be the archetypal doppelgänger movie. Jeremy Irons plays Beverly and Elliot Mantle, twin gynecologists who regularly swap lives and identities like it’s no big thing, but who descend into a spiral of madness and addiction when shy Beverly falls in love with a patient (Geneviève Bujold) who has two wombs. Cronenberg’s usual body horror is sublimated in the details of this relatively tame but still deeply disturbing and devastating film, and Irons is flat-out incredible in it.

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Like Enemy, Duncan Jones’ 2009 debut Moon is a film about how disturbing it would be to discover you had a doppelgänger, and like Mickey 17, it’s a sci-fi cautionary tale about cloning and the cheapness of human life. Sam Rockwell is a solitary lunar miner who awakens after an accident, only to discover himself, still lying unconscious at the accident site. It turns out they’re both clones. It’s a rare example of a doppelgänger movie where the doubles work together to uncover a larger mystery, but it’s still unsettling, and its location — the dark side of the moon — is ripe with the eeriness and symbolism the genre thrives on.

Where to watch: For free with a library card on Hoopla, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

And now for something completely different. Normally, a doppelgänger movie is about two doubles trying to destroy each other. This 2001 Jet Li movie is about one evil doppelgänger trying to destroy all the other versions of himself across the multiverse, and another good one trying to stop him. It’s a dumb, post-Matrix bit of high-concept action — or, alternatively, a popcorn precursor to Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s not as thoughtful about doppelgängers as the other movies on this list, honestly, but there aren’t many doppelgänger movies where you get to watch Jet Li doubles do kung fu on each other (or Jason Statham have hair!), so it gets in.

Where to watch: Prime Video, free with a library card on Hoopla, free with ads on Pluto TV

Richard Ayoade’s black comedy from 2013 (a good doppelgänger year), starring Jesse Eisenberg, is a modernized adaptation of the urtext of all doppelgänger fiction: Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1846 novella. (For more literary doppelgängers with even greater existential angst, try Vladimir Nabokov’s Despair.) Eisenberg is the office worker whose life is upended by a more confident doppelgänger, only nobody else can see the resemblance. Ayoade maybe leans a little too hard on the Kafkaesque visuals, but his lighter comic sensibility is a welcome take on this often dark subject matter.

Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV

Jordan Peele’s 2019 follow-up to Get Out is probably the best exploitation of doppelgängers for pure horror. Lupita Nyong’o and her family are terrorized by doppelgängers of themselves on vacation; this is potent enough imagery as it is, but it turns out Peele has something even grander and darker in mind. After the wickedly pointed Get Out, some felt Us was too psychologically diffuse and elusive to land the same way, but that, surely, is the point. Ambiguity and doppelgänger movies go hand in hand.

John Woo’s Face/Off, in which John Travolta and Nicolas Cage swap faces, is technically not a doppelgänger movie, but it hits so many of the genre’s themes, and is so extravagantly entertaining, it’s surely allowed in the canon. Ditto A Different Man, the 2024 dramedy in which Sebastian Stan receives a miracle cure for his facial disfigurement but then has his life overtaken by Adam Pearson, who looks something like his old self. And in Black Swan, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis don’t look exactly alike, but Dostoyevsky’s theme of duality — and story of an impostor assuming the protagonist’s life — are fully explored.

For some other genre flavors within doppelgänger world, try Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, a broad comedy in which the excellent duo must battle evil robot versions of themselves, or The One I Love, which gives the typical low-key Sundance relationship drama a wicked doppelgänger twist. There are some smart sci-fi twists on the concept embedded in Dual (obviously) and Annihilation (more obscurely). And, returning to Cronenberg-adjacent territory: Does iconic 1980s horror Possession count as a doppelgänger movie? I’m not sure. I’m in two minds.

Where to watch: Face/Off is streaming on Paramount Plus, or free with a library card on Hoopla. A Different Man is streaming on Max. Black Swan is streaming on Max. Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey is streaming for free on Prime Video with ads. The One I Love is streaming for free with a library card on Hoopla, or for free with ads on Plex. Dual is streaming on AMC Plus, or for free with a library card on Hoopla. Annihilation is streaming on Paramount Plus. Possession is streaming on Shudder, Metrograph at Home, and for free with a library card on Kanopy and Hoopla. All of these movies are available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon and Apple TV.