It appears as though they thought or knew that this movie would not have widespread appeal despite the fact that it stars Jake Gyllenhaal who plays two, very different roles in the film.
This film can be considered a bit tough to figure out, especially the ending and the symbolism that appears throughout the film and many people, including me, found these artistic "easter eggs" to make the film have more questions than answers once you are done watching it.
Jake plays the role of professor Adam Bell who teaches history at a university. He is presented as a rather boring person who enjoys living life in a routine way until one day he has a boring conversation with a coworker about movies and the coworker suggests a "happy" film that he watch. Adam decides to watch the film only to discover that there is someone in the background of several scenes that looks exactly like him.
Although it is out of character for him, Adam decides to seek out his doppelganger and talk to him.
When they do meet they discover that they have very different lives and for no good reason, they start to try to undermine one another. Is it the intrigue about how someone who looks exactly the same as you, including a scar on their bellies, that brings them to immediately fear and loathe one another, or is there some sinister supernatural power at play here?
Things don't go well by the two of them discovering one another and I'm just going to leave it at that because I don't want to spoil anything.
I think that people who have the attention span to seriously pay attention to this will enjoy most of it, although the freaky imagery that randomly occurs will throw a few people off and there are several things in this movie, including the ending that aren't conclusions and this was done intentionally by the writers. You leave the film wondering what the real story is, and since the director hasn't actually ever revealed the real story there, it leaves a lot of what you've seen up to interpretation. It's very David Lynch in this regard and that isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Sometimes I am in the mood for a film that you have to think about and ponder, other times I want something that has a conclusion. There are many theories about this film online and none of them have ever been confirmed to be correct by the director.
Should I watch it?
I think this depends a lot on what kind of film fan you are. If you need everything to be spelled out for you then definitely not. If you enjoy a bit of intrigue and tension and perhaps even the need to discuss a film online for potential answers after you see something that is in fact, very well done, then this could be something that you would really enjoy. USA doesn't often give us films of this sort and when they do, they tend to do poorly at the box office just like this one did. I don't know why they didn't at least attempt to screen this massively, but they didn't. Perhaps they were fishing for awards and they did get some minor ones in the process.
I'm glad I watched it but it is only because I was in my bedroom with my phone in the other room that I managed to pay attention to the entire thing. This is not a casual film and you will need to pay deep attention during the entire thing to really have any idea as to what is going on.
This film is NOT on Netflix but I am sure you can figure out other ways to get your hands on it if you want to