The Double will stay in your mind, like a bit of food caught in a tooth

I should warn you that if you go see The Double it is one of those films that will trouble you long after the event. It will trouble you at breakfast and it will trouble you at lunch and it will trouble you as you go about your business, whatever that might be. Yes, a pain — haven’t I got enough troubles of my own? Haven’t I got enough to think about as it is? — but it is so singular and compelling, there is every chance it is worth it.

It’s directed by Richard Ayoade, his second feature after the terrific Submarine, who is known to TV viewers as Moss from The IT Crowd as well as being a regular guest on those comedy panel games that have been told to include more women, like we don’t have better things to do. Who knew he’d turn out to be such an interesting and original director? Who knew he had such panache? You? Thought not.

However, unlike Submarine, which was a coming-of-age comedy, this is dark. Exceedingly dark. It is based on Dostoyevsky’s novella of the same name, and stars Jesse Eisenberg as Simon James, a shrinking figure in a too-big suit whose loneliness is palpable, and who is barely noticed, timid, constantly trampled upon. (If Dostoyevsky hadn’t wanted him, I think Gogol would have snapped him up.) Ayoade sets up his character in the very first scene, when Simon is asked to get up from his train seat and obliges, despite the fact that there is no one else in the carriage. Throughout, the time and location are ambiguous. It could be the past, it could be the future, it could be the present, but set in a different, nightmarish, Stygian reality.