The Twin premieres May 6 on Shudder.
It's well known that Scandinavians make some great detective series and horror films. The works of Lars Von Trier and Nicolas Winding Refn, as well as the original Let the Right One In (2008), are proof enough. And that’s one of the reasons why hopes were high for writer/director Taneli Mustonen’s The Twin, his first horror project since Lake Bodom (2016). The Twin is a period piece set in the ‘80s and stars Teresa Palmer and Steven Cree as Rachel and Anthony Doyle, a married couple who experiences the horrific loss of one of their twin boys in a car accident. Starting with a strong first 20 minutes, The Twin zings through the inciting incident and the aftermath with the despondent family moving to Anthony’s hometown Finland for a fresh start. Unfortunately, the promise is then squandered in an overly long slog through derivative beats pinched from better movies that culminates in an ending that is not worth the journey.
The Twin is obviously working within in a tight budget, but Mustonen and cinematographer Daniel Lindholm do manage to make a really beautiful-looking film that uses natural landscapes to set the stage for Rachel and Anthony’s tragedy, as their family car trip turns fatal under a gorgeous blue sky next to golden-lit cornfields. The unseen car accident takes the life of young Nathan Doyle but leaves the parents and his twin, Elliot (Tristan Ruggeri), alive. Their world goes very bleak, visually and metaphorically, but they try to rebuild in Anthony’s old hometown, hastily buying a huge house with lots of floors and weird attic rooms with circular windows. It’s all very Amityville Horror-esque, especially when young Elliot asks to stay in the creepy attic bedroom with a twin bed added for his departed brother. Rachel allows it because she thinks it’s helping the kid mourn. Anthony is less enthusiastic but capitulates to their process.
And that’s how it goes for some time, with Elliot asking his mom “chilling” things like whether they love him as much as they did Nathan. All of it rattles Rachel, who vacillates between haunted and then panicked when her son isn’t within eyesight. Anthony is checked out, trying to write a new book and visiting with the stern, Puritan-looking neighbors he grew up amongst. If it isn’t clear already, nothing is exactly subtle in this movie, as Rachel then experiences prophetic-style dreams where she’s in a mourning veil in a cornfield burying Nathan but Elliot is actually in the coffin. Meanwhile, Elliot ominously wishes on a special rock for something he won’t share, while the house’s odd angles and dark corners lend itself to plenty of jump scares. And then gaunt neighbor Helen (Barbara Marten) tries to befriend/warn Rachel that Elliot’s wish is really bad juju and so is the rest of the town.
For as quick and efficient the opening of The Twin was in getting right into the story and the grief of Nathan’s death, the second half slows down to the pace of molasses in winter. Mustonen is pretty enraptured with giving Rachel and Helen really long exposition scenes to talk about the foreboding of the town and the oddities with Elliot, without getting to anything of note until the third act. And then it gets overly complicated with Teresa Palmer having to do just about all of the work of getting us to care about this family and their plight. While she’s quite effective at making us feel Rachel’s grief, that’s all she gets to do in a pretty passive role for the majority of the film. And poor Cree isn’t given much to work with until the very end, which is rather unfair to a very good actor. As for Tristan Ruggeri, he’s anchored to the creepy kid role, which is accentuated by his Damien-esque haircut and blank stare. The only thing that is truly chilling about him is the Nathan picture in his bedroom that looks like it was ripped from the “Can you tell this kid isn’t right?” handbook.
Even with some beautiful scenery and the stark Finnish landscape creating an intriguing vibe, Mustonen and co-writer Aleksi Hyvärinen’s story is ultimately unworthy of their film’s well-considered aesthetics. Their lumbering script that steals from Rosemary’s Baby, The Other, and every Pagan horror movie ever results in a narrative style that is 90% deflection and 10% exposition dump. And any film that resorts to a Scooby-Doo-style ending monologue to explain everything we’ve been watching gets a big airhorn of “Nope” for its lame efforts. Palmer and Cree did much better work in their last collaboration together, A Discovery of Witches. Sadly, The Twin just wastes their talents on horror party tricks and wintry smoke and mirrors.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/b8MANRx
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