An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at a Shudder original, 2022’s The Twin
After losing one of their sons in a tragic accident, Rachel (Teresa Palmer) and Anthony move to Finland where Rachel starts to suspect something demonic is after her son.
Is it Scary?
The Twin has a few pretty loud jump scares especially right off the bat but then it settles into its slow-burn pace so you won’t be too scared. While you might be creeped out by the end, you won’t leave the movie scared unless you know someone who has a twin because one of them is definitely evil.
Detailed Plot:
The film opens with a car driving past a cornfield and we hear a happy family inside. Since this is a horror movie, that happy shit is not allowed, so we immediately cut to them getting into a car accident that leaves one of the two children dead.
We next see the remaining family consisting of mother Rachel (played by Teresa Palmer), father Anthony (played by Steven Cree), and their surviving child Elliot (played by Tristan Ruggeri) at his brother, Nathan’s, gravestone.
Following the tragedy, the family moves to Finland to Anthony’s hometown near the northeastern border. Arriving at their new house, Anthony and Rachel take in the view as Elliot goes off wandering alone. Moments later, Rachel realizes she can’t hear Elliot and they start to panic.
Rachel finds Elliot by some swings and freaks out on him but apologizes after he says she’s hurting him. Later as Anthony helps the movers place stuff, Rachel looks around the house and finds some old pictures of dead children propped up on the mantle, nothing says decor like dead children.
Understandably seeing dead kids reminds her of hers and she starts to cry as Anthony enters the room. We then learn the home used to be a rectory which means it was home to priests and nuns and that’s cool I guess, but how does that explain the dead kid photos?
Rachel goes off to look for Elliot upstairs eventually following his calls to an attic room. While she searches for him in a closet, there’s a jump scare when he shows up on the bed next to her. Elliot tells her he wants the attic to be his new room and though apprehensive, Rachel appears to agree but wants to discuss it with Anthony first.
That night while putting Elliot to sleep in his attic room, Elliot asks Rachel if she and Anthony love him as much as they love Nathan. Rachel assures him they do and says that while Nathan is gone, he will always be with them. Elliot, who is clearly still processing his brother’s death, asks if he’s always with them, who did they bury?
This is a legitimate question from a confused child who doesn’t understand death yet but the background music prangs like we should be terrified of this question. Apparently, Rachel is a bit taken aback by the question but gets distracted when she discovers that Elliot is keeping one of Nathan’s ball-in-a-maze puzzle toys under his blanket.
Elliot asks to keep the toy and Rachel agrees. Back with Anthony, he and Rachel argue over how to deal with Elliot’s processing of Nathan’s death as Rachel has agreed to put a bed in Elliot’s room for Nathan. That night Rachel has a nightmare about attending a funeral where a child is being buried. As we pan over to Rachel, the sound of Elliot or Nathan screaming is heard from within as something bangs inside the casket.
Upon waking up Rachel tells Anthony that in the nightmare it’s not Nathan in the casket but Elliot. This also appears to be a common nightmare since Nathan’s death.
Sometime later, the family buries some of Nathan’s stuff near the home and Elliot chooses to bury the ball-in-a-maze toy he had earlier. Anthony then looks up ominously at the attic window and we see there are now two beds and a creepy-ass photo of Nathan. (Hyphens are important)
The family goes out on the lake and Anthony takes them to a rock with a red handprint. He tells them the story his father told him, the prints were left by cavemen and if you place your hand on them while making a wish, it will come true. Elliot places his hand on the print and makes a wish.
The next day while Anthony types away on a typewriter (what year is this?) Rachel hears Elliot playing with someone in his room. At his door, she calls out to him asking who he is talking to and he ignores her. He then gets up and closes the door without answering her question. The disrespect is real.
Later at a welcome party, Anthony goes off to talk to some locals and a guy who used to take care of him as a child. Meanwhile, all the other locals don’t talk to Rachel but look at her like she owes them money. An older woman approaches and introduces herself as Helen (played by Barbara Marten), and the two go out for a walk.
From their conversation, we learn that Anthony is a somewhat well-known author but the pride of the town and Rachel is a photographer. We also learn that it was Anthony’s idea to move the family to Finland but the way Helen says that fact makes it appear as if Helen knows more than she is letting on.
Helen then randomly and unprompted says, “I’m not crazy, okay?” and that’s never a good sign.
Helen grabs Rachel’s hand and tells her that she dreamt about her and her son. She adds that she knows he made a wish on the handprint and it has now come true. The two are then interrupted by Anthony arriving who tells her the town wants to celebrate their wedding since it didn’t happen in the town years ago.
This involves the two getting on a ceremonial wedding swing which Rachel is apprehensive about. The two get on and it feels like Anthony basically forces Rachel onto it since she keeps saying she doesn’t like it. Immediately she starts to panic and looks around for Elliot. Things get worse when we hear Elliot call out to Nathan and runoff.
As Anthony’s laughter gets distorted, Rachel has a panic attack and passes out. Incredibly she doesn’t fall off the swing despite there not being any strange on it as far as I can tell.
Anthony has the swing stopped and everyone gathers around Rachel to attempt to calm her down. We cut to later with the family on a skiff heading back to the house, I guess they have to cross the lake to get to town? Importantly Rachel is holding a very dirty Elliot who appears to have gotten lost and thanks her for finding him.
That night after putting Elliot to bed, Rachel and Anthony discuss his recent behavior with Anthony agreeing to talk and spend some time with him doing ‘guy stuff’. We then cut to Elliot in bed switching over to sleep on Nathan’s bed.
The next day while Elliot and Rachel run around the home playing, we see Anthony in his study, crying while looking at pictures of Nathan. That night after having another nightmare, Rachel goes to the kitchen and drinks milk straight from the cartoon and gets a little surprise.
As she’s about to walk out of the kitchen she suddenly turns back to the window and sees Elliot standing outside by the swings. Rachel runs outside calling out to him but he disappears. She then sees him near another fence but his face distorts and this is just another nightmare.
Waking up, she checks on Elliot and finds him on Nathan’s bed. Upon waking him, he tells her he’s not Elliot and that he’s actually Nathan. DUN DUN DUNNN. The next day Anthony and Rachel take all of Nathan’s stuff out of the room and decide to take Elliot to a doctor.
There, the doctor tells Rachel that Elliot is a mirror, a reflection of her fears and emotions. He tells her the best thing is to be calm but Rachel pushes back saying it’s not about her and angrily leaves with Elliot. With no other choice, Rachel goes to visit Helen for advice.
Helen reveals the area has a rich pagan culture and if you’ve seen a few recent horror movies, that should set off some alarms. She then tells her that something is visiting Elliot at night and it’s not Nathan, it’s “The Eternal Incubus, Destroyer of All Virtues”.
Rachel apologizes and nopes out of there. That night Helen is awoken by sounds in her home, looking around she inspects the bathroom but finds nothing. As she watches her face off camera, she starts to scream as if something is attacking her.
The following day Helen visits Rachel and tells her about the bathroom incident which was actually a dream and calls it a warning. When Rachel dismisses the warning, Helen reveals that years ago her husband became possessed and had an exorcism performed in town. Following that, any picture taken of him had his face distorted, a year later he was dead.
Helen correctly assumes that Rachel is having nightmares and tells her those are warnings but Rachel tries to dismiss them as her own mind playing tricks on her. When Rachel asks what would “The Eternal Incubus, Destroyer of All Virtues” want from her son, Helen says ‘everything’. Which is pretty fucking vague given the circumstances.
Later after finding an old camera, Rachel goes outside and snaps some pictures of Elliot on the swings. Elliot gets pissed off, and tells her to stop, he then gets off the swings and runs off.
The following night while putting Elliot to bed, he and Rachel argue when Elliot accuses Anthony of not loving him. Rachel then finds Nathan’s ball-in-a-maze toy that they buried, under his sheets and sees that his hands are covered in dirt. Deciding to burn the toy for some reason, she also decides to not tell Anthony about it when he questions what she’s burning.
That night Rachel wakes up to Elliot just outside her door who tells her to follow him as Nathan wants to see her. When Rachel tries to wake up Anthony, Elliot tells her, pretty confidently, that he won’t wake up. For some reason, Rachel doesn’t question this and follows him downstairs. Meanwhile, at Helen’s home, it appears as if Helen is seeing this unfold in a dream as she yells out ‘don’t go’ while asleep.
In the dining room, Elliot places a candle in front of a mirror and tells Rachel to concentrate. He then calls out to Nathan in the mirror and the candle starts to flicker. Who the hell taught this kid ghost rituals? Elliot tells Rachel to take the mirror and look at his reflection as he stands behind her.
Rachel doesn’t tell him to cut the creepy shit out and decides to do as he says. After looking at him in the mirror, she realizes that Elliot is holding the ball-in-a-maze toy and it’s looking pretty not burned to a crisp.
Before she can say anything she hears something coming from the mirror and turns back to it. In a jump scare, black hands emerge from behind the mirror and grab her. This causes Rachel to jump back and drop the mirror, breaking it. The light then turns on and Anthony appears with some friends. He tells Rachel that all they want is Elliot for an exchange and they’ll be able to have Nathan back.
Anthony tells Rachel that the exchange has already happened and says that Elliot is gone. Turning back around, Rachel sees Elliot is gone and flips out. As she runs out of the dining room, she’s grabbed by several of the townsfolk and we see the doctor inject her with something, most likely a sedative.
The following morning, Rachel wakes up and hears Anthony downstairs laughing with Elliot. While the night before appears to have been another nightmare, when Rachel tosses out a tea bag, she sees the remnants of the broken mirror in the trash.
The family head into town to get a new vacuum as Anthony claims to have broken the old one and while there, Rachel secretly goes to the store to pick up the photos she had developed. Back at the house, she locks herself in the bathroom and reviews the photos revealing that Elliot isn’t in the pictures.
Elliot calls out to her from behind the door and asks to see the photos but Rachel refuses to tell him there’s something wrong. Rachel rushes to Helen’s and shows her the photos. Although Helen is confused at first, she believes this is “The Eternal Incubus, Destroyer of All Virtues” way of telling Rachel that he already has Elliot.
Helen requests to see Elliot and the two head back to the house. On their way there, Rachel tells Helen about the night before, and about Anthony mentioning an exchange. Helen then realizes that the town is preparing to resurrect the devil and implies that Anthony’s success as a writer and Nathan’s death are part of the deal to bring the devil back.
In order to complete the ritual Elliot has to be sacrificed and the devil will resurrect as Nathan who will attempt to convince Rachel to be its mother. Arriving at the house, Rachel takes Helen to Elliot and introduces him. Helen is inexplicably shocked, tells Rachel she’s sick and rushes out of the room.
Rachel follows after but when the two reach the staircase, they’re met by Anthony and the townsfolk. Anthony tells Rachel they’re only there to help her and to not be scared.
Apparently, Helen came prepared as she is packing and by that I mean she’s got a gun. Wait, was her plan to shoot and kill Elliot? One of the group spots the gun and they all rush her as she fires a shot off. Meanwhile, other townsfolk rush Rachel as Anthony yells out to not hurt her. We then see the doctor administer a sedative, knocking Rachel out.
As Rachel slips in an out of consciousness, she sees both Elliot and Nathan sitting on a chair. We then pan across some garbage and see Helen’s head amongst it. Rachel wakes up by the lake surrounded by women in white robes and men in black robes. It’s ritual time!
Anthony appears in a grey robe and looks over to Rachel who appears to still be suffering the effects of the sedative as she can barely get up.
One of the men gives Anthony a blade and Anthony takes it, hesitantly walking over to the sleeping Elliot. As Anthony is about to kill Elliot, Elliot wakes up but Anthony slices his neck open anyway! HOLY HELL.
Rachel screams out eventually passing out. One of the women collects Elliot’s blood in a cup and feeds it to Rachel, who immediately becomes pregnant. The group pick up Rachel and drop her into the lake.
The following morning Rachel wakes up back in bed at home and wakes up hearing Elliot calling out to her. Asking where he is, he tells her he doesn’t know but that it’s hot. Rachel tries to leave the room but we see that someone has placed a chair on the other side preventing her from opening it.
Eventually, she’s able to break through and sneaks upstairs like she didn’t just make a ton of noise. Meanwhile downstairs we see Anthony talking with the doctor and apparently, they didn’t hear shit. In the attic, she searches for Elliot and finds him in a box… what?
Rachel and Elliot sneak out of the house but Anthony sees them from the window and chases after them. Running through the woods, Rachel loses sight of Elliot and gets tackled by Anthony. Anthony starts to choke her in order to knock her out but Rachel is able to grab a rock and knocks him over the head.
Climbing on top she punches him a few times and picks up a large rock, preparing to kill him. Anthony begs her to do it as he’s tired of it but she sees Elliot and decides not to. Rachel runs over to Elliot and hugs him but as Anthony gets up, he reveals Elliot never existed.
It’s a twist! Anthony reveals that on the day of the accident he and Rachel got into a drunken fight. Angry at him, a drunk Rachel told Anthony she was leaving him and drove off with Nathan eventually getting into the accident that killed Nathan.
The accident left a guilt-ridden and severely depressed Rachel who one day created the delusion that Nathan had a twin that survived the accident. Anthony decided to let her believe the delusion as it made her happy.
After several neighbors saw Rachel talking and playing outside with a child that wasn’t actually there, they started asking questions. Eventually, the police were called and Rachel was forced into a mental asylum.
After some time Anthony couldn’t stand seeing Rachel there and decided to bring her to Finland where he hoped she could live out her fantasy without anyone bothering them. Unfortunately, her delusions became worse and more outlandish.
While Anthony is explaining all this to Rachel, we see multiple flashbacks where originally we saw Rachel talking to Elliot but this time we see it from Anthony’s point of view, and see that Rachel is talking to no one.
We also see that it was Rachel who dug up the ball-in-a-maze toy, she smashed the mirror on her own head, and we see that the reason Helen called Rachel sick was because Elliot wasn’t actually there.
As Rachel cries we see Elliot yelling to not listen to Anthony but she slowly starts to realize it’s the truth and Elliot disappears. As she flashbacks to the accident, she starts to walk towards Anthony but Elliot jumps out in a jump scare and runs off telling us that it didn’t work. Rachel runs after Elliot and arrives at a grain silo with Anthony close behind.
Inside Rachel climbs to the top and finds a crying Elliot. After comforting him and telling him she believes in him, Anthony climbs up and once again tells her Elliot isn’t real. Rachel yells that he is but when she turns around, he’s gone.
Looking around, she sees him at the bottom of the silo and Anthony decides to convince her he isn’t real by pulling the lever that releases the grain, essentially “killing” him.
Rachel pushes Anthony out of the way accidentally causing him to fall off the tower and to his death. She then runs down and digs for Elliot but doesn’t find him. Looking over at the dead Anthony, she has a moment of lucidity and realizes what has happened.
We cut to sometime later and Rachel is in New York at the gravestones of Nathan and Anthony. The film ends with her getting into her car where we see she is still suffering from delusions as she sees not only Elliot in the car but also Anthony and Nathan.
The Twin’s Biggest Question
The Twin has a big twist revealed at the end that pretty much changes the entire film and since we watch the whole thing through Rachel’s point of view, we have an unreliable narrator. But, the reveal at the end answers a lot of questions leaving only one and it’s a big one, was Helen freaking real or another Rachel delusion?
The problem with this is the movie purposely leaves it ambiguous. There is evidence for and against it.
Evidence that Helen is real:
- When Rachel tells Anthony she spoke to Helen, he immediately calls her the ‘town crackpot’ so he is aware of her without Rachel saying who she is.
- In the scene where Rachel first talks to Helen, we can see background characters looking at both Rachel and Helen, this is important because no one ever looks at Elliot who is a delusion.
- Helen is the one that feeds Rachel the idea of paganism, devils, and possessions, prior to this Rachel makes no mention of it.
- After every meeting with Helen, she mentions something that later makes Rachel’s delusions worse. Helen brings up the pictures which makes Rachel take pictures and discover that Elliot isn’t there. Helen assumes the exchange means the resurrection of the devil which causes Rachel to have a delusion of Elliot being sacrificed. If Helen was a delusion, why would she cause things to happen that kill Rachel’s main delusion?
- Helen says she doesn’t feel Elliot’s presence. If Helen was part of Rachel’s delusion, why would she have Helen who, at this point, has no reason to doubt Elliot’s existence say something that brings into question his existence?
- Rachel had no idea Helen had a gun, if she was another delusion of Rachel’s why choose to make her have a gun
- Although the townsfolk never talk to Helen, they do interact with her when they go for her gun. The townsfolk are actually there at this point.
- In the sequence of flashbacks that shows us things as they really are, after Anthony’s reveal, we still see Helen calling Rachel sick. This really happened.
- In the end after Anthony’s death, we see a quick two-second scene of police at the silo with townsfolk watching the events. Helen is in the far back wearing the blue hat she was wearing earlier in the film. Helen’s death was a delusion since it happens after Rachel has been sedated.
Evidence that Helen is not real:
- No one talks to Helen although Helen says this is because they all see her as crazy, it’s still weird that Anthony never says a word to her or mentions her again
- How would Helen have known about Rachel’s delusion of seeing Elliot touch the rock and make a wish? She says she saw it in a dream before she even met Rachel but that would be impossible.
- Helen’s nightmares while Elliot has Rachel perform the mirror ritual, how would a real Helen know it’s happening?
- Helen conveniently feeds into Rachel’s delusions (yes this can be used for and against proof of Helen’s existence)
- Helen could be seen as the part of Rachel’s brain fighting the delusions which is why Helen doesn’t see Elliot and why the sacrifice leads to Elliot being killed.
In the end, I’m in the Helen was real camp, I think Helen truly was the town ‘crackpot’ who had her own delusions about satanic rituals and cults. When Rachel visits Helen, Helen first says the town is built on pagan land and there is no church but later she talks about an exorcism performed in a church in town. Unfortunately, since Helen had no idea Rachel was suffering from her own delusions, their delusions fed off each other and made both of them worse.
Helen also changes her delusions to fit Rachel’s new delusions, for example, Helen never mentions a sacrifice or resurrection of the devil until Rachel says that Anthony spoke of an exchange. Helen takes this new development and morphs her delusions to fit which in turn caused Rachel’s delusions to get worse.
The biggest question is still how did we see Helen having those nightmares unless those were also part of Rachel’s delusions which then throws EVERYTHING about Helen back into delusion territory.
Review:
The Twin is good. Teresa Palmer and Barbara Marten do a great job in their roles. Steven Cree as Anthony felt a bit wooden at the beginning but that may be because his character wasn’t doing much. Towards the end, he also does a good job.
The dialogue was okay, nothing great but nothing bad or cringy. The story was good and the writers and actors did a good job portraying grief while maintaining the mystery behind what was going on. I am conflicted about the twist because on paper it’s a great twist, it does what a twist is supposed to do, revealing something that turns the entire story on its head while still making sense.
Side note: There will definitely be people who will ‘call’ the twist before it happens, this is true for every movie with a twist but it’s not true for every person watching the movie, so I try not to judge a movie too much on the actual twist but instead on how the twist affects the story… Unless the twist literally came out of nowhere and makes no sense.
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I rewatched the movie just to make sure that it wasn’t a random twist for the sake of twists and it’s not, there are subtle hints throughout the entire film like Anthony never once looking at or talking to Elliot. In one scene while the family is at the breakfast table, Elliot says out loud that he wants to help Anthony with the well and when Rachel comments on it, Anthony doesn’t know what she’s referring to.
So, good twist but it also feels like the writers cheated a bit. Apart from Helen (having a character with that kind of influence over the story be ambiguously real in this kind of twist is cheating), there are a few quick scenes where we’re in someone else’s point of view and we hear Elliot.
When Anthony is putting away the bed pieces after removing them from Elliot’s room, we can clearly hear Elliot and Rachel arguing. At that moment we’re in Anthony’s point of view, we shouldn’t be hearing Elliot.
A nitpicky issue I had with the film was the tropes, Elliot does a bunch of “evil child” tropes, for example, he draws an ‘evil’ picture, Rachel catches him talking and playing with no one, and he randomly appears for a jump scare when Rachel is looking for him. The problem with them in this movie was, he only does them once and they don’t elevate his character in any way. They felt shoehorned in.
Speaking of character, no one has one except for Helen. Like Watcher (2022) our main character is forced immediately into a situation so we don’t know what they’re actually like but here it sticks out more and hurts the film a tiny bit.
Overall I would recommend The Twin especially if you like slow-burn movies that explore grief and don’t mind that they are a bit longer than they need to be.
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Cast IMDB