The Twin, the new film from horror streaming service Shudder, is something of a hodgepodge of recent independent horror trends, mining the resurgence of folk horror and low-key character-driven scares that can be seen in films like Men or Umma. Despite strong cinematography and direction, the film is let down by a script that relies on tired genre tropes and lackluster plot twists instead of genuine story or character.
The Twin focuses on Rachel (Teresa Palmer) and Anthony (Steven Cree), a married couple grieving the death of their son Nathan. On top of their own grieving process, their son Elliot (Tristan Ruggeri) is taking the loss of his twin particularly hard. In an attempt to get away from their pain, the family moves to a remote town in Finland, where Anthony grew up. However, as Elliot seems to play with an imaginary Nathan more and more frequently, Rachel's fear for her surviving son's life -- and a growing suspicion of the village that always seems to be watching her -- slowly unravels her attempts at finding peace.
The Twin, by director Taneli Mustonen, is a technically well-made film, suffering from a lackluster script that substitutes plot twists for story development. When the film wants to, it can produce some strong imagery, especially while trying to establish an uneasy tenor for the countryside or harken back to the tragedy that set the film in motion. There are even a few quieter beats that utilize some impressive filmmaking tricks. The film's primary setting quickly blends together, a large house with no real unique qualities to separate it from the thousands of other "creepy houses" that have appeared in film. There's really nothing to make The Twin stand out from the films it's clearly inspired by.
That's ultimately the problem with The Twin. It's so keen on recreating the tone of other, more complete films that it loses any chance to be original. There's clear inspiration taken from the works of Ari Aster, like Hereditary and Midsommar, with dashes of The Others, Rosemary's Baby, and The Sixth Sense all thrown in for good measure. The film is so busy trying to replicate the look and feel of those films that it never bothers to fully explore its story or advance its characters. They spend the film largely unlikeable and at times even aggravating, switching from cloying to furious in a heartbeat with little rhyme or reason. The Twin wants to be other horror movies instead of just being its own.
The script by Mustonen and Aleksi Hyvärinen isn't helping. It gives the cast little nuance to their characters beyond their overwhelming grief, leaving the performances blunt and without any real sense of character. Palmer does solid enough work, but Rachel just isn't a compelling character outside the genre tropes she embodies, failing to really give Palmer anything to latch onto. The closest thing the film has to an interesting character is Barbara Marten's Helen, a bizarre neighbor who finds herself involved in their lives. She's more or less dropped in the third act, which takes some ridiculous twists and turns in an attempt to shock the audience.
The Twin looks well-made and has beats that showcase Mustonen's technical skill as a director. This is a film that ultimately can't escape the long shadow cast by previous, better horror films. With a stronger script that explored the characters more deeply instead of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, this could have been a genuine drama about grief and how it can overtake one's entire life. As it stands, The Twin feels like an attempt to recreate a horror film without really committing to the character work to make it an interesting one.
The Twin premieres May 6 on Shudder.