After the sudden death of his twin brother, Roman (Dylan O’Brien) attends a therapy group for bereaved twins, where he befriends loner Dennis (James Sweeney).
Cinema screens are no stranger to grief. There’s a familiarity to stories that explore mourning, loss, and the long crawl back after losing those closest to us. So, when Twinless begins telling the tale of two souls who find each other after losing the other half of themselves, it’s easy to start filling in a mental paint-by-numbers of how this feel-good story will play out. Around the 20-minute mark, however, the film takes an unexpected turn, upending all those expectations and revealing itself to be something entirely more interesting.
The less you know about Twinless going in, the better. Its narrative twists are meant to be experienced firsthand. What can be said is that director James Sweeney’s mix of tones blends into a cocktail we haven’t quite seen before: part bromance, part dark comedy, with a dash of The Talented Mr. Ripley, it is also, against all odds, a genuinely moving exploration of male loneliness. It really shouldn’t work. The commitment to diving into the ickier, uglier corners of its premise should feel tonally off-putting. Yet the film never winces, following through fully to create something increasingly compelling as its layers are peeled back.
The deeper Twinless goes, the more morally messy and unsettling its plotting becomes.
Twinless gets incredibly dark. Yet what shines through is the film’s depiction of male friendship. You won’t find bro handshakes or locker-room posturing here; in their place is something far more authentic and honest. Dylan O’Brien and Sweeney (on co-lead starring duties, as well as writing and directing) share such ease on screen that they often seem able to finish each other’s sentences. From wingmanning each other on dates to hanging around supermarkets to deep late-night chats, it’s hard to watch them together without being completely won over. That foundational warmth does much of the heavy lifting as the film takes its characters to unlikable places.
O’Brien is given the chance to flex acting muscles in a way we’ve not seen before here, tackling dual roles as both the confident, charismatic Rocky and his grieving, poster-child-for-repressed-male-anger twin, Roman. The latter is a complex portrayal of a man reaching outward amidst anger and grief, delivering a performance that is deeply sad, genuinely funny, and even includes the finest (and most confident) cinematic depiction of someone speaking Simlish — the language of the Sims videos games — to grace our screens.
The deeper Twinless goes, the more morally messy and unsettling its plotting becomes. In weaker hands, the whole thing would fall apart, but Sweeney’s confident screenplay and direction keep it all tightly controlled. He moves effortlessly from cringe comedy to a hopeless romance and then on to genuinely stomach-turning moments of discomfort. Few second-time directors shift tones with such ease, and the cherry on top is that in its final moments, the film becomes subtly moving, transitioning from creepiness to cacklingly funny to compassionate, all with the same ease as giving a beloved sibling a hug. Those expecting a gentle tale of loss won’t leave Twinless healed; what it offers instead is something far more complicated and unsettling, and all the better for it.
A cute, warm-hearted indie darling this is not. Twinless is an uncomfortable, pitch-black comedy you won’t be able to look away from, with a career-best performance from Dylan O’Brien.
