Tina Kakadelis
To have a twin is to have a built-in friend from birth. It’s a deeper bond than your average sibling relationship and, as such, should the day come when you lose your twin unexpectedly, it’s like a part of you is gone. James Sweeney’s Twinless is all about twins and their complex relationships. A black comedy about the ways people deal with loss, Twinless is unexpectedly sincere and dry, often in the same breath.
Twinless opens with the image of a street in Portland. The trees are blowing in the wind and people walk along the sidewalk, but the calm is interrupted by the sound of screeching tires. An accident has happened, but we don’t see how it occurs, not yet at least. Twinless next takes us to a funeral where Roman (Dylan O’Brien) and his mother (Lauren Graham) stand solemnly by the grave of Roman’s twin, Rocky (O’Brien in a dual role). In an attempt to handle the loss of his brother, Roman attends a support group for people who have lost their twin. While there, Roman meets Dennis (Sweeney), an awkward, twinless attendee. The two strike up an immediate, unlikely friendship that leads them down a path of self-discovery.
It’s hard to talk about Twinless because it’s one of those films where everything you thought you knew about the story and these characters is upended about a third of the way through. It’s an incredible narrative shift so smartly disguised that it smacks the viewer across the face in such a satisfying way. Above all else, though, Twinless is a story about loss. Roman and Dennis are chasing the relationships they lost. Even though Roman and Rocky weren’t as close as they could be at the time of his death, Roman still regards Rocky as an extension of himself. The two shared everything as kids, but the last conversation they had was about socks. Relationships are fragile and they need to be nourished to survive. Twinless looks at how a person mourns a relationship that cannot get back to what it once was.
O’Brien is known for his teen drama days as the best friend in MTV’s Teen Wolf and as the dystopian hero in The Maze Runner films. Twinless gives him the space to turn in his best performance as Roman and Rocky (who we meet in flashbacks). The twins, while identical, could not be more different. Rocky is confident, the life of the party, and charmingly open to everyone he meets. Roman is quiet, shy, and quick to anger. Rocky is gay, Roman is straight. Part of the reason Roman is drawn to Dennis is because Dennis is gay, while his twin was straight. Roman sees Dennis as a second chance to have a relationship with Rocky, and this leads to one of the film’s most impactful scenes. Dennis encourages Roman to talk to him as though he’s Rocky, and the camera stays on Roman as he rambles about everything he should’ve, could’ve, would’ve said. O’Brien is marvelous in the whole film, but particularly in this moment. His pain boils to the surface in such a visceral, vulnerable way, and he breaks down in tears with such sincerity that you forget where you are for a moment. That this is all just a movie and there is no Rocky to miss.
Twinless marks Sweeney’s second time in the director’s chair. His debut feature, Straight Up, has a similarly weird relationship at the center. Twinless is a step up in terms of stylization. In particular, Sweeney plays a lot with double images to emphasize the duality of his characters. The way they feel split between two bodies, themselves and their twin. Sweeney uses mirrors and split screens in such an effective manner to capture how Roman and Dennis experience the same event in wildly different ways. It gives the audience an indication that things between these new friends aren’t as balanced as they seem.
Twinless is a bit like a gobstopper candy, in that it takes its time to shed each of its layers before it gets to the core. The film is never slow, never lingering on one layer too long before delving even deeper into the grief of these two young men. Twinless is as dryly humorous as it is quietly devastating, and emotionally thought-provoking in the best way.
