My Review of Twinless (2025)

 

Written And Directed by James Sweeney

Dennis (to Roman): "You know how people say "just be yourself"? Like, what version of me? I hate most of them. But the version of me that was just hanging out with you, I... I wanted to be him all the time."

I'm going to start this review by pointing out that I'm a twin myself and the polar opposite of my siblings, though we do share some things in common. The premise of this movie certainly intrigued me.

Dylan O'Brien as an actor has definitely done his best to shed his teen heartthrob identity from his Teen Wolf days by taking on of a variety of different roles. In this movie, he's a set of twins. There's Rocky, who's gay and Roman who happened to be straight.

Then there's Dennis, played by writer and director James Sweeney himself. Dennis was briefly involved with Rocky until the latter ghosted him for George (Chris Perfetti). Dennis was also one of two people who last saw Rocky alive before the latter got hit by a car.

Now that wasn't strictly Dennis's fault but everything else from that point onwards absolutely was. No one told Dennis to wear a wig and attend Rocky's funeral and no one told Dennis to befriend Roman under false pretenses. These were things that Dennis chose to talong with lying about having a dead twin.

It's a pretty messed up lie because the sad thing was that under different circumstances maybe Dennis and Roman would've been friends. They enjoyed grocery shopping together and each others company. However it was Dennis inadvertently pairing Dennis with his co-worker, Marcie (Aisling Franciosi) that saw the big lie unravel.

I do like that in spite of his growing resentment towards Marcie, Dennis knew that he couldn't lie to Roman any longer. I don't like that Roman's reaction was a violent one, even if the movie made a point of highlighting his anger issues. There's a rather bittersweet final scene between Dennis and Roman that ended the movie on a complicated note.

- There's a few strong support performances from Lauren Graham as Rocky/Roman's mother, Lisa, Susan Park as Dennis's boss Sage, Tasha Smith as twinless twins group woman Charlotte and Francois Arnaud as Roman's gay friend, Sammy. Katie Findley also appeared.

- Dennis's "twin" was called Dean. He pretended he wanted to be a lawyer, worked for a book company before switching to real estate after being fired.

- Standout music: Haim's Leaning On You and Evan and Jaron's Crazy For This Girl.

- Chronology: The movie was mostly set in Portland, Oregon and briefly in Moscow, Idaho. Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's Day all factored in.

Twinless turned out to be an interesting second effort from writer/director James Sweeney (I may or may not watch his debut, Straight Up at a later date). Solid enough chemistry with Dylan O'Brien and a rather murky story, it did make for an interesting experience.

Rating: 7 out of 10