The doppelganger has been used to scary effect in a wide variety of movies over the years. From high profile releases such as The Prestige and Moon to weird, horror-influenced films like Denis Villeneuve's Enemy and David Lynch's Lost Highway, the idea of an exact double performing evil deeds is potent and sinister. The new horror movie Cam, which can now be streamed on Netflix, uses this concept within the world of adult live cams with impressive, scary results.

　　The film stars Madeline Brewer (The Handmaid's Tale, Orange is the New Black) as Alice, a rising cam girl who uses the online alias Lola. She has a faithful group of viewers for whom she performs requests on camera, including some outrageous stuff involving knives and fake blood. She's desperate to crack the Top 50 on her cam site, but is reluctant to push her act into the more extreme sexual direction of her rivals.

　　Alice's life away from the camera is very different; she's a normal young woman with a regular job and a loving family. But when someone--or something--with her name, face, and live cam login starts occupying Alice/Lola's channel and stealing her fans, things get really weird.

　　On paper, Cam's mix of sex and horror suggests that it will be an exploitative film focused solely on its sensationalist qualities. But while it does make full use of these more commercial subjects, the film also presents a sensitive, intelligent view of the live cam industry as well as some insightful observations about how we interact with modern technology. The movie's writer, Isa Mazzei, is a former cam girl, and she ensures that Alice is a sympathetic, believable character, never once judging her choices. Alice is a woman in full command of her life, making great money while working from behind the relative safety of the webcam. Despite some creepy behavior from one of her overly enthusiastic admirers, Alice can look after herself perfectly well in that world--it's the "woman" with her name and face that is the true danger.

　　Cam is produced by Blumhouse Films, who are best known for Get Out, the Purge series, and the Paranormal Activity movies. But while it is definitely a horror movie, it avoids many of the clichés of the genre, and ultimately has more in common with the surreal work of Lynch and the tech-satire of Black Mirror than a more conventional scary movie. There are no jump scares and there's little violence, and most of the movie either takes place in daylight or in the brightly-lit glare of Alice's studio.

　　What director Daniel Goldhaber instead delivers is a movie steeped in creeping dread, as the mystery deepens and Alice tries to keep her life--and her mind--together. Much of the film consists of Alice attempting to solve the riddle of her doppelganger, who has taken her on-camera persona in a far more explicit direction than she ever did. Soon her secret identity has spilled over into her real life, and her "work" as Lola is exposed to her family. Again, Mazzei and Goldhaber deal with this in an unexpected way, helped by Brewer's committed performance. Cam also has a lot to say how we use our identities online, and makes some smart observations about how we are all ultimately powerless against the outside forces that control those identities.

　　Cam is an ambiguous film, and some of its more surreal touches might turn off audiences who enjoy a more conventional approach to horror, particularly in the movie's last third. But frankly, Netflix is filled with horror movies that make easy, obvious choices and deliver nothing but clichés and predictable scares. What Cam does is impressive--it works as a gripping, creepy horror thriller and as a topical, provocative satire, but never forgets to put its characters ahead of both aspects.