The Horror Inside You: What Doppelgangers Expose About Our Inner Darkness
You are unique. There’s no one else in the universe like you. That’s what our parents always told us and most of the time, it’s true. But horror is not ‘most of the time’. Wild things happen in horror stories. The dead don’t stay that way, the monster under the bed emerges, and one day while minding your own business, you come face to face with another you. Why is the idea of another self so intriguing? Like everything else in horror, it’s more than just gore and scares. Horror is layered and meaningful, for those who care to look.
Think of classics like the opposing personalities of Jekyll & Hyde, the empty shells of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or the menacing doppelgangers of Us. Just learning that you are not the super-special creature that you were led to believe is bad enough, but worse is that it’s never a feel-good romp where you and Other You game the company’s sick day policy or incite a wacky but well-intentioned Parent Trap situation. But who is who? If Other You is running around murdering, you can feel pretty confident as to which twin you are. There is a more complicated scenario, one in which the evil twin isn’t so easy to spot, leading you to a very uncomfortable question – is it me?
Do you really know who you are?
One of the many problems of living life as a human is that we only know what we know. We make a choice to go right or left, and experience the consequences of that choice, never knowing for certain where the path not taken would have led us. Evil twins provide that opportunity, allowing us to see exactly where that other choice would have taken us, potentially forcing us to re-evaluate the choices we’ve made and the lives we’re living. Being confronted with a darker, scheming version of ourselves holds a mirror up to our efforts at living a good life, doing the right thing and being a decent human (assuming that’s your goal). The evil twin is a measuring stick that lets us know how we’re doing in that respect. If you and your dark sibling are similar in too many ways or difficult to tell apart, you might want to take stock of your life and how you’ve been operating. Maybe there are things you need to change, and evil twins provide the motivation to do that.
And if the possibility of finding out you’re not who you thought you were isn’t bad enough, it’s not just our own evil twins we have to reckon with. Every relationship comes with the same question – are you dealing with the good or evil twin, and how can you possibly know the difference? The unfortunate answer is that you can’t. Not for sure. Other people show us what they want us to see and we have to either accept it as true or not. This is difficult because so often, we judge people by their words, not by their actions. If someone is swearing up and down to you that they have only altruistic intentions and you decide to overlook the blood dripping from their hands – that’s on you.
Finally, we also need to look at things from our twin’s perspective. Whatever their origin, they generally want the same thing, which is to take what we have. Why would a doppelganger want to replace you? You might consider an unfulfilling job, stress at home and the agony of existing during late-stage capitalism. But evil twins have something to tell us – we have more than we realize. We have something worth taking. However unhappy or downtrodden we think we are, our evil twins can take us someplace even worse.
Evil twins are a reminder to be on guard with others but mainly ourselves, to be on the lookout for the insidious creep of greed, selfishness and indifference. Even if you’re sure that you are the good twin, stand in front of the bathroom mirror late at night when the house is quiet. Think about what you did that day and what effect you had on the world. Your evil twin is out there somewhere. Even if it’s not standing in your bathroom, even if you’re sure the evil twin isn’t you. Take a good long look in the mirror, just in case.
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