This article examines the representation of the double in relation to issues surrounding horror cinema, and explores the possibility for a new form of the double through an analysis of Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Doppelgänger (2002).

To date, in horror film studies, the binary continues to be a core problem. Because horror films are generally rooted in exclusive differentiation, they have been examined mainly in terms of gender or race. The double is not free from such a binary relation either. Representations of the double in film can be divided into two types―juxtaposition and replacement- but in either case, the uncanniness of a double is determined relatively on the basis of an original in the same image or in preceding images. But does the possibility of freedom from such bases exist?

In this respect, Doppelgänger is a particularly exceptional film. In it, juxtaposition and replacement are regarded as the intermittent relation of images, and one person is caught in the intermittence. As a result, the body is directly able to produce difference. Through the examination of the transformations of the double as well as the composition of images, this article reveals that the film illustrates the possibility for a baseless double, and considers it in terms of its potentiality for cinema.