This all could have gone so wrong. James Sweeney's movie Twinless is sweet and heartfelt, and you can easily see how the actor-writer-director could have fallen off his tightrope into something broader, or louder, or less sensitive and compassionate. But it helps when you care about your characters, and that makes a big difference.
Sweeney plays Dennis, who meets Roman at a support group for people who had twins who've died. Roman's brother, Rocky, passed a few months earlier, and it's clear Roman is rudderless, and just as clear that Dennis understands where Roman is coming from. As it turns out, Rocky was gay, though Roman is not, and Dennis is gay, so Roman also sees an opportunity in Dennis to understand his own brother a little bit more.
But this all isn't exactly the situation we really have on our hands. And while it's only about 20 minutes in when everything changes, I won't reveal that here, except to say that Dennis isn't being entirely above board with his own story. And where it goes, and what Dennis does, and the entire tenor of the film could have felt much, much creepier than it does, largely because Sweeney treats Dennis like a real person—a person who makes bad decisions, but not because he's a creep, or conniving, but because he's sad, and fairly awkward, and lonely. Just as important to it all is Roman, who's trying to find his own way, and seems to have been in that situation even before his brother's death.
Both leads are terrific, with Dylan O'Brien especially good in a dual role as Roman and Rocky— on paper these men have traits that we've seen hundreds of times before, but, again, the actors give them real humanity and approach them with compassion. I'm not entirely convinced Sweeney couldn't have told a similar, and maybe better, story without the, um, issue that runs through the movie. Still, whether it really needs to be here or not, Sweeney doesn't fumble it.
Twinless is in theaters.
