TWINLESS - Mark Reviews Movies

Twinless, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 4, 2025

Both of the main characters in Twinless are heartbroken. Each of them isn't being truthful with the other about why, either, although to very different degrees of dishonesty.

It's a flat-out lie on the part of Dennis, played by writer/director Sweeney, but there are levels to just how mendacious he's being. The character could have been the biggest obstacle to finding any connection with this story, because he is exploiting grief for his selfish ends and inventing an entire fiction in order to do so.

Honestly, the screenplay is only a few steps removed from becoming a thriller about deceit and obsession. Instead, it's a comedy—one that communicates its characters' need for connection and sympathizes with that yearning so well that we can understand why they feel the need to lie in the first place.

A lie—and not an insignificant one—is the starting point of this story, but Sweeney doesn't reveal it immediately. At first, we meet Roman (Dylan O'Brien), who's attending a funeral with an added layer of grief for everyone attending. That's because they're burying Roman's twin brother Rocky, who was killed after being hit by a car, but whenever anyone looks at the brother, they're seeing the dead man, too. One guy, offering condolences, begins sobbing from just a brief glimpse of Roman.

Roman ends up at a support group for identical siblings whose twin has died, and that's where he meets Dennis, who starts to talking to Roman during a break and invites him to get something to eat. Eventually, they start spending more time together, because both men say they feel uncomfortable doing even ordinary things, such as going to the grocery store alone. Roman has somewhat become used to it, since he and Rocky did live separate lives since their college days together, but that's completely different from being fine with being alone.

One could say that Sweeney tricks us with this premise, and on a practical level, he most definitely does. Once we see through the different ways in which these characters lie about themselves and hide what troubles them the most, however, it becomes clear that they, as well as the film itself, has been emotionally honest the entire time.

That makes it more complex than the actual premise suggests. That comes during a flashback, when we see Rocky (also O'Brien, looking the same but transforming his personality and physicality entirely) and Dennis meet by chance. They talk and flirt and go back to Rocky's apartment, where Dennis almost seems as engaged with stories about Rocky and his twin brother than the sex—if not more so, actually. The two even share some pillow talk in which they're quite honest.

Rocky misses his brother, a fact he hasn't told Roman because of whatever has come between them. Meanwhile, Dennis' fascination with twins came from his childhood, when he used to imagine that he had a secret one, whose existence was kept from him by his parents. That was a happier fantasy than the likely reality of his life, which was that his parents divorced, his father moved to Tokyo, and dad never invited his son to live with or visit him there because he didn't want Dennis.

There is one more thing Dennis has been keeping from Roman since he met him, not at all by chance as it turns out. However, that almost seems inconsequential compared to the big lie that he never had a twin who could have died in the first place. The two spend more and more time together. Roman, who knew his brother was gay, stands up for Dennis when a group of bigots pass them after a hockey game and tries to find someone for his new friend to date. For his part, Dennis latches on to Roman in a completely platonic way but does seem jealous regardless, especially when Roman meets Dennis' friendly co-worker Marcie (a bright, bubbly, and wholly sincere Aisling Franciosi) at a costume party she's hosting.

Sweeney's performance is pretty much the balancing point of the entire film. If his character possesses even a hint of some annoying or creepy or otherwise negative quality, the story's trick would collapse with him, especially because O'Brien's performance is so inherently sympathetic in its quiet but all-encompassing pain. As played by the filmmaker, though, Dennis is genuinely funny, endearingly awkward, so transparently lonely, and aware that he has crossed several lines in how he has become friends with Roman. We might not like what he does, but we comprehend why he's doing it in a real way.

Roman later reveals something about himself and his relationship with his brother, too, that isn't particularly decent, and it might go toward explaining why he does connect with Dennis so strongly. They are, in distinct ways, using each other to make up for their own regrets and what they feel as if they have lost—or never had.

The relationship here is far more complicated than a measure of lies and obfuscations, in other words, because it's simply but wisely about two deeply wounded people. They are so caught up in their own pain that they might not even realize how much they could and inevitably will hurt each other.

The flip side, though, is that these two might actually need each other, as unlikely as that may seem from how and why this friendship comes to be. Twinless doesn't settle for the obvious or the simplistic. Even the deceptions of its characters reveal deeper truths about them that can't be dismissed so easily.

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