Twinless

This dark comedy stars Dylan O’Brien on double duty as gullible everyman Roman and his swanky, successful gay twin Rocky. But when Rocky dies in a freak accident, Roman rewires his social life with Dennis (writer-director James Sweeney), a new acquaintance who is a little too obsessed with twins.

Not your average twin comedy. Throwing grief and recovery in the mix, Twinless isn’t fixated with tired-out doppelganger tropes like mistaken identities and Parent Trap-coded family-switches. The last mainstream Hollywood film to ever try to change the twin comedy formula was perhaps the straightforwardly titled Twins, where the gag was that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito were non-identical twins. But in Twinless, as its title suggests, there’s not much room for any brotherly comedy as one of the siblings is killed off in the very start. James Sweeney’s cheekily wholesome screenplay is instead fixated on Dylan O’Brien’s Roman learning to swim after his lifeboat is gone. More than featuring homogeneously costumed sibling pairs, the film establishes early on a support group for grieving twins. Now, a “Dead Twins-Anonymous” isn’t a familiar sight in a teen comedy.

Dylan O’Brien delivers a career-best act. It’s only a darkly funny ride from thereon, adequately twinned with muted moments of teary-eyed melancholy. O’Brien already grown out of his Teen Wolf and Maze Runner era ever since he began supporting A-listers like Mark Wahlberg (Deepwater Horizon) and Michael Keaton (American Assassin). But it’s in Twinless where he truly gets to prove his emotional prowess. His Roman is a much-needed tragic hero in today’s times of the fragile, toxic “manosphere”. A straight man with narrow ideas of sex and sexuality (he believes his brother and Dennis are gay because of the “gay gene”), Roman is your average gym-going, beer-guzzling, sports-watching “dudebro”. But that doesn’t stop him from eventually being vulnerable, Sweeney graciously allowing his leading man to cry on and off camera. And these aren’t any Oscar-baity tears, mind you. Be it an outburst at his mother or a mellowed-out party, O’Brien uses every situation to delicately peel Roman’s layers, punctuating his cries with muted pauses and cathartic sighs. Yes, Twinless is a joyous crowd-pleaser, but it’s also a gentle exploration of the grief that lingers once the funeral is over. And O’Brien’s class act bears testimony to that.

Writer and director James Sweeney inserts himself as a supporting character, the kind you would love to hate. While the late Rocky is brought back in flashbacks, the more successful, smarter, and more sexually confident brother is no more; Roman struggles. Then comes Dennis, played by Sweeney, a self-pitying corporate loner who uses Roman’s grief to fulfill his own twisted twin fantasies. With dollops of self-deprecating humor and cringe-inducing social awkwardness to throw at himself, the writer-director excels as O’Brien’s co-lead. Before matters get darker, it’s a treat to see the two interact with Dennis listening to Roman’s twin memories with stalkerish delight.

Some cheeky writing and queer satire keep the laughs coming. Expect quotable moments like Dennis revealing he’s gay when Roman warns him not to eat some stale cookies on the table because they “taste like balls, only for Dennis to reply, “I like balls,” and stuff some down (only to spit out the cookies). Another instance over a grocery store counter finds Dennis inquiring about the kind of girls that Roman likes, only for our straightest-of-the-straight hero to say that he’s into girls with breasts. It’s the kind of comedy you would find in a 2000s R-rated romp (minus the political incorrectness and straight-boy humor, which Twinless subverts). Stemming away from preachy queer dramas, Sweeney’s contrasts between straight and gay friends gear more towards recent raunchy queer comedies like Bottoms, Bros, or Booksmart. In his confident and assured (not to forget silly and self-aware) second feature, Sweeney is a comedic talent to watch out for. And in an ideal world where comedy wasn’t a much-subbed genre for the Oscars, Dylan O’Brien should have been prepared for at least a nomination.