Editor's note: The following contains major spoilers for The Twin.The new horror film The Twin featuring Teresa Palmer out in theaters and on Shudder, is a work that is impossible to fully discuss without giving away everything in it that happens. This is not because the ending is a stunning conclusion that leaves you shaken. Rather, it is a film that follows a familiar formula with some brief glimpses of boldness that then becomes completely undone by an inexplicable and baffling late revelation. It robs itself of the minor potential it initially had in just being a solid, sturdy horror film with a decision that leaves everything feeling hollow. It exposes the problem with horror putting all its narrative emphasis on creating an unreliable protagonist without anything substantive to underpin it all. It renders the rather meandering events of the film moot in retrospect. While many films have done this type of story well, The Twin is simply not up to the task. It shoots itself in the foot unnecessarily, leaving what might have been an unsettling experience with nothing to stand on by the time the credits roll.
It all begins with an intriguing enough premise that, while not being particularly inventive, was working to find a groove of paranoia and fear. Alas, this was not to be as it abandons its narrative foundation in favor of a more clichéd and contrived twist. The story is that, following a tragic car accident that takes the life of one of her children, Rachel (Teresa Palmer) decides to move with the surviving twin son (Tristan Ruggeri) and her husband (Steven Cree) from the United States to Finland. Grieving and shattered from the immense loss, Rachel begins to believe that her departed son is actually still with them, inhabiting the one who is alive. She is unable to convince said husband or doctors to believe her as they chalk it up to her imagination, belittling her at every turn. Besought by nightmares and with nowhere to turn, she begins to suspect that said husband as well as some rather creepy-looking locals are not to be trusted. Indeed, we are invited to think there may even be a cult operating in the shadows.
All of this is rather straightforward, though it was still a rather spooky experience with some occasionally interesting visuals that drew you in. That is until the film overcorrects from being a more focused though simple story of horror by trying to throw in an absurd twist that undercuts everything it has been building towards. Very late in the film, we learn that actually Rachel has indeed been imagining essentially everything since the death of her son. Not only was she the one responsible, but she doesn't actually have another son. There were no twins and she just had begun to believe the son that died was still alive. All of this information is conveyed in a massive exposition dump by her husband that deflates everything from the story, leaving what remains feeling both banal in its emotion and utterly lacking any sense of actual fear in its construction. This is because it renders everything basically unimportant in an attempt at grasping at some sort of surprise ending that only ends up being empty. It is devoid of any sense of gravity, floating away into nothingness. It sours the experience with such commitment and speed that it would be almost impressive if it wasn’t so thoroughly disappointing. Having seen the film twice now in quite rapid succession in order to suss out what the experience was like knowing everything, it very quickly becomes a waste of time when almost nothing matters that would be best be spent on more incisive works of horror.
There are outstanding films that pull off similar ruses, some of the most noteworthy ones being The Sixth Sense or The Others, though they were deepened by the revelations they provided and what they show us about their characters. The Twin lacks the same sense of emotional investment, reducing Rachel to being a symptom rather than a multidimensional character. When we know that we largely can’t trust her in anything, it makes every scene of the fear she feels lose its weight. What could be tragic instead is trite and totally lacking in any sense of tension. Not only does this do a terrible disservice to the character, but it also makes the interactions she has with her husband baffling rather than believable. In one key moment where they are on a giant swing, she begins to cry out for her son who obviously isn’t there. He informs her that the kid is totally fine and keeps merrily swinging without a care in the world. While we know from the long monologue he gives at the end that he was trying to keep up the illusion, you’d think he would seem a bit more concerned about his wife’s distress at this moment. Instead, he just laughs and ignores something that you think he would be particularly attuned to. Of course, the endless yet perpetually frustrating explanation for all these inexplicable moments could be that none of this is actually happening as we see it.
Though if this is the endless dodge to questions of what is happening, then we are left with a film that is all about evasion rather than emotion. It takes what would be an already generic set-up and only makes it more so, robbing it of any sense of meaning when reflected back on. Characters not being believed is a common formula in horror as the terror comes from being alone and isolated in addressing a crisis. While this film was never going to reinvent the wheel, the manner in which it was initially unfolding seemed like it could arrive at something potentially impactful. Indeed, there was one moment where a rather striking image made me rethink everything about where this was going. Of course, that also wasn’t actually real just like almost everything in the film ends up being. Instead of making the story more interesting, this takes everything we thought was happening and reduces it into a black hole of vacuity. it uses the unreliability of our protagonist in the least compelling way and just leaves everything on a note of superficial shock, stripping away the elements that worked with the story to instead fade into cliché. With nothing substantial to chew on, all it leaves you with is a hunger for what could have been. It is an incomplete meal of a film that reduces itself to irrelevancy.