THE TWIN (2022)

Studio:     Shudder/RLJE Films
Director:    Taneli Mustonen
Writer:     Taneli Mustonen, Aleksi Hyvarinen
Producer:  Aleksi Hyvarinen
Stars:     Teresa Palmer, Steven Cree, Barbara Marten, Tristan Ruggeri

Review Score:

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Summary:

To heal from their son’s tragic death, a grieving mother moves to her husband’s remote hometown in Finland where she fears the dead boy’s twin brother may be the target of devilish evil.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Rachel and Anthony Doyle lose their young son Nathan in a tragic car accident. To heal their family with a fresh start, Rachel and Anthony move from New York to Anthony’s former hometown in remote Finnish countryside with Nathan’s twin brother Elliot.

The family moves into an old manor that used to be a local rectory. Rachel begins suffering from recurring nightmares of Nathan being buried, then finding Elliot alive inside the coffin. Elliot similarly begins behaving strangely. To force their family to move on, the trio buries Nathan’s remaining mementos in the yard, including a wooden maze game that Elliot had been holding onto as a keepsake.

Rachel and Anthony go rowing with Elliot on a small waterway. Anthony points out ancient red handprints on a stone wall where local legend claims people can make wishes. Elliot holds his hand against the markings and makes a silent wish.

Rachel finds Elliot playing with an imaginary person in his bedroom. Elliot closes the door so she can no longer see him.

Elderly residents from the nearby village hold a welcome party for Rachel and Anthony. Anthony introduces a doctor who used to tend to him when he was a boy. Rachel also meets Helen, a local eccentric who claims she dreamt about Rachel and her son, then cryptically warns that the boy made a wish that was granted.

Although she worries about leaving Elliot alone with strangers, Anthony insists that Rachel join him for a traditional ceremony where they ride a wedding swing together. After losing sight of Elliot while riding, Rachel passes out from a panic attack, forcing Anthony to stop the swing. Upon regaining consciousness and recovering Elliot, Rachel finds it strange that the boy refuses to say where he disappeared to. Rachel also points out to Anthony that Elliot has been behaving oddly since they arrived in Finland, but Anthony dismisses his wife’s concerns.

Elliot starts sleeping in his room’s second bed. He also draws disturbing pictures of the house burning and his parents dying. Meanwhile, Rachel continues having unsettling nightmares and odd experiences such as swallowing a small tree branch in her milk.

When Rachel tries moving her son to his original bed, Elliot claims he is Nathan. Worried that something happened to Elliot at the party, Rachel later tries confiscating Nathan’s remaining toys, leading to a physical struggle that injures Elliot.

Rachel and Anthony take Elliot to Anthony’s old doctor. Claiming she is merely projecting her fears and emotions onto Elliot, the doctor tells Rachel she needs therapy, not the boy.

Rachel goes to see Helen for clarification about her warning at the party. Helen points out that there is no church in the village because they always burn to the ground due to the town’s rich pagan culture. Helen also shows Rachel how everything in the village, from waterways to crop shapes, is circular in nature and centers on a sacrificial rock. As she reiterates that Elliot’s wish was granted, Helen warns that the boy isn’t visited at night by his dead brother, but by the devil, who wants to take Rachel’s son. Rachel leaves in disbelief.

Following a frightening home invasion thought to be a warning from villagers, Helen visits Rachel the next day. Helen confesses that her dead husband was the first person to find out the truth about the town’s satanic secrets, but Helen didn’t believe him at first. Helen shows Rachel a photograph in which her husband, believed to be possessed by something evil, appears to be surrounded by an unknown entity. Helen advises that Rachel must trust her mother’s instinct and listen to what her dreams are trying to tell her.

Acting on the suspicion Helen gave her, Rachel takes photographs of Elliot that she drops off to be developed in town. Rachel angrily burns Nathan’s wooden maze in the fireplace after discovering Elliot dug it up from the yard.

Elliot tells Rachel that Nathan wants to see her. As though entranced, Elliot leads Rachel to a table where he has her look into a candle flame in front of a mirror to spiritually communicate with her dead son. Paranormal activity culminates in the mirror suddenly breaking.

Anthony and a group of villagers interrupt the séance. Anthony tells Rachel that the villagers only want Elliot so they can make an “exchange” of some sort. The villagers capture Rachel. The doctor sedates her.

Rachel dismisses the previous night’s events as another dream when she recovers in the morning, but she senses something strange upon seeing broken mirror pieces in the trash. Rachel secretly picks up the pictures she had developed and shockingly discovers that Elliot doesn’t appear in any of them.

Rachel rushes to show Helen the photos. Helen warns that the demon is taunting Rachel by implying he already stole her son. Helen becomes frightened when Rachel mentions Anthony said something about an “exchange.” Helen connects Anthony’s newfound success as a writer to the devil’s resurrection, but realizes Rachel has to give up both twins as part of the pact. Helen asks to meet Elliot in preparation for taking him to a priest who can stop the evil from attaching itself to his soul.

Helen seemingly meets Elliot. Helen’s demeanor suddenly changes as she accuses Rachel of being sick. Villagers confront Rachel and Helen downstairs. Helen pulls a gun, but villagers quickly swarm her and Rachel. Rachel sees both twins together before being sedated once again.

Rachel wakes up at the ceremonial altar surrounded by robed villagers performing a ritual. As part of the ritual, Anthony sacrificially slashes Elliot’s throat, which causes Rachel to pass out. An old woman feeds the boy’s blood to Rachel. Something grows inside Rachel’s womb. The villagers then dunk Rachel in the surrounding lake.

Rachel wakes up locked in her bedroom. Hearing Elliot’s voice calling for help, Rachel breaks out. Rachel overhears the doctor issuing a dire warning to Anthony. Rachel rescues Elliot from a locked trunk and sneaks him out of the house.

Anthony chases Rachel into a forest where he eventually tackles her. Rachel clubs Anthony to the ground with a rock, but stops herself from killing him even though he pleads with her to finally end their suffering. Having been separated in the chase, Rachel reunites with Elliot.

Anthony rises to his feet to try telling his wife that Elliot doesn’t exist. Anthony explains that Nathan was their only son, and he never had a twin. Rachel planned to leave Anthony and take Nathan with her, but her blind anger caused the car accident that killed him, and she never forgave herself. Rachel closed herself off and denied her culpability while blaming the accident on Anthony. Rachel’s mind created Elliot as a coping mechanism, and Anthony fed her fantasy because it made them a family again. But as it became harder to live that lie, Rachel’s worsening psychiatric condition landed her in an asylum. Anthony thought he could save Rachel by relocating her to Finland because he didn’t how else to help her. Anthony pleads with Rachel to finally accept the truth.

Elliot screams that Anthony is trying to kill him before running off to an old grain silo. Rachel chases after the boy while professing her love for him. Anthony confronts his wife after she climbs to the top inside the silo. Anthony drowns Elliot in grain to prove the boy isn’t real. Rachel tackles Anthony to get him way from the silo lever, which inadvertently pushes Anthony to his death. Rachel frantically digs through the grain, but finds no sign of Elliot before collapsing next to her dead husband.

In the aftermath, Rachel returns to New York where she visits Anthony and Nathan’s graves. As she prepares to drive way however, Rachel imagines that Anthony, Nathan, and Elliot are all still alive in the car with her.

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Review:

Concerned adult + Vulnerable child + Evil entity = Slow-burn supernatural suspense. I see this equation employed so often in horror that I’m shocked there isn’t a shorthand term to classify this specific subgenre by now. I like the alliteration of “Protective parent in paranormal peril,” although I can’t imagine “4P thriller” catching on anytime soon.

But you know the type of movie I’m talking about. The lead is usually a woman, likely a mother, sister, or invested social worker of some sort. The kid either accidentally invoked an urban legend, triggered a curse, or maybe the family just moved into a haunted house with a secret history. If there’s a main male, he’ll probably be a disbelieving husband. Unless he’s elderly or eccentric, in which case he’ll be the person who provides exposition after the leading lady’s online research and connect-the-dots goose chases go cold. I’m talking about mainstream titles that include “Lights Out” (review here) and “Come Play” (review here). I’m also talking about the indie scene, which has produced “They Live in the Grey” (review here), “The Cellar” (review here), and “The Twin” in just the first few months of 2022.

Speaking of “Lights Out,” “The Twin” also stars Teresa Palmer. In “Lights Out,” Palmer played the stepsister who had to save her little brother from their possessed mother. Here, Palmer graduates to the matron role. Now she has to rescue her young son from an ancient evil linked to her husband’s past, which is close enough to practically be a déjà vu performance for Palmer.

Rachel hasn’t been the same since the death of her young son Nathan in a tragic car accident. Desperate to pull his wife out of her debilitating depression, Rachel’s husband Anthony proposes moving out of New York and back to the small village where he grew up in Finland. This could be the fresh start their family needs, and perhaps the perfect place to raise Nathan’s identical twin brother Elliot.

Unfortunately for Rachel, she can’t shake the nagging notion that something isn’t right with the little countryside town. Elliot’s increasingly bizarre behavior, which starts with an imaginary playmate and escalates to claiming Nathan now inhabits his body, does even more to unsettle her already rattled mind. Anthony does even less to alleviate her concerns. In fact, as Rachel’s peculiar paranoia grows, she comes to suspect her husband may be in on whatever sinister secret the village is keeping quiet. And whatever that secret is, Elliot appears to be central to their conspiratorial plan.

“The Twin” director Taneli Mustonen and his co-writer Aleksi Hyvarinen previously collaborated on their outstanding 2016 thriller “Lake Bodom” (review here). That Finnish-language film was such a slick, subversive take on typical slasher conventions, I hoped “The Twin” would similarly upend expectations by turning “4P thriller” tropes on their ears.

Disappointingly, that’s not the case. Other than breaking out a bit of a bonkers ending, which I’ll applaud in a moment, Mustonen and Hyvarinen settle for straightforward fright film fare with “The Twin.” Taking most of their cues directly from “Rosemary’s Baby,” the two men also mix in a little Lovecraft. Not the eldritch horrors and cosmic creatures, but the shadowy townspeople living anachronistically. What they make from those molds however, is a drawn-out drama populated by creaking doors, creeping camera movements, tearful talks by firelight, and a lot of gloomy faces wearing weary eyes. That’s on top of previously identified clichés like an ominous old woman who peeps out crucial information piecemeal for pacing purposes.

By no means could anything about the movie be considered speedy, and that’s a long trough to trudge through to get to a pretty decent twist as a small reward. The ending’s wicked bleakness almost completely resurrects the film’s descent into sleepiness, except it’s hard not to have felt suffocated by the long 90 minutes it takes to get to the 20-minute reveal.

CONTEXTUAL SPOILER

And if Apple TV’s “Servant” hadn’t been doing this same piece of the premise so much better, “The Twin” might have hit harder.

END SPOILER

In addition to being another example of a “4P thriller,” “The Twin” also checks off common requirements for streaming horror standards. I’m growing tired of repeatedly pointing out this formula, which is less of a formula and more of a practical business model for distributors of digital content. But these movies generally consist of a small cast (only four main speaking roles in “The Twin”), an easily accessible location where the bulk of filming takes place (a remote manor), and enough familiarity in the story that executives will give a greenlight before budgeting a modest six-figure sum.

“4P thrillers” (Is it catching on yet? No? Didn’t think so.) either are your bag or they aren’t. “The Twin’s” swerve doesn’t make it much different from the rest. So while its mildly macabre moodiness might make for a momentary distraction, it doesn’t possess the power to swing the pendulum to the opposite side of where your disposition towards this type of chiller already swung.

Review Score: 50

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