Two grieving men bond in support group and form unlikely friendship.

A movie’s ability to surprise is a great thing indeed, and with trailers these days opting to give away so much of a story, it was nice to go into film only really knowing the premise and to be surprised and delighted throughout.

Dylan O’Brien is Roman, a dim, quick-to-anger young straight man, mourning the loss of his identical twin brother, Rocky, gay, charming and a bit flighty (also played by O’Brien in flashback). In a support group he meets another twin survivor, Dennis (played by triple-threat James Sweeney, who also wrote and directed). They form an unlikely bond as they each struggle to recover from some deep psychological wounds.

The story veers down some surprising paths as we learn more about these men and their connection. Roman is aimless and without a tether, even as we learn he and Rocky weren’t as close as they once were. Dennis harbors his own secrets and his bro-crush on Roman is more of a symptom than a cure of what he’s dealing with. Lauren Graham appears all too briefly as Roman and Rocky’s mom. Aisling Franciosi has one of the more interesting roles as her initial appearance as the goofy, annoying admin at Dennis’ work gets more enmeshed in his life.

I’m usually loathe to enjoy when young directors get too cutesy with the direction, but there are two great sequences that could be described that way, but Sweeney manages to make them important to the narrative, and work well in and out of context: in one, a split screen follows Dennis and Roman at a party as they separate from each other, in the other, Dennis has a stroll down the street where an earlier discussion of confirmation bias is visually shared (can’t really share more without suggesting a spoiler).

Twinless was fun, funny, surprising, uncomfortable, and just so enjoyable.

Jonathan’s grade – A-