by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Dylan O’Brien, James Sweeney, Lauren Graham
Intro:
Twinless is wince-inducing in the best way. Its drama and its comedy are equally brutal, and yet its pacing is so smooth as to feel like all those broken-glass sensations have been ground down into the finest of sparkly dust.
Striking gold with his feature debut Straight Up (one of the most remarkable screwball comedies of the past decade), writer/director/star James Sweeney naturally has gone bigger for his sophomore film. Bigger cast, bigger run time, bigger scope, bigger laughs, and much, much bigger emotional sucker punches.
While Sweeney’s turn as Dennis shows him in his impressively neurotic wheelhouse, the film is ultimately all about Dylan O’Brien as Roman… and Rocky, as he’s playing twins here.
Between his stand-out turn in Love & Monsters and bolstering other queer representation on film through his work on Ponyboi, O’Brien’s come a long way from being stuck in an allegorical maze of puberty in The Maze Runner. As Rocky, he exudes raw magnetic charisma, even when he’s being vulnerable during pillow talk, and as Roman, he owns his boneheadedness in an equally attractive way, and his rapport with Sweeney makes for an endlessly watchable duo. He also gives an eye-watering monologue that could stand as one of the best of 2025.
Sweeney’s sense of humour is ‘cringe comedy’, but that label feels like it under-represents what makes his comedy (and his dialogue especially) so noteworthy. Rather than leaning into the enfant terrible that a lot of stereotypical ‘indie romcoms’ bank on, the cringe here comes from a place of honesty; externalising the things that you’re ashamed to admit to even thinking, rather than just recognising the strain of socialisation. It’s an approach that not only leads to guilty giggles but ends up cutting much closer to the bone with the film’s central musings.
Where Straight Up stood out with its mile-a-minute quotables, Twinless shows Sweeney far more confident in letting the frame and the blocking convey the heartache shared by the core characters. Grief hangs heavy over these people, all going through their own mourning for lost family, lost friends, lost relationships. The mood that comes through the agonising silence is sharpened to a razor edge.
Dennis and Roman’s choices of words are often deeply uncomfortable, but there’s an even deeper discomfort that shows through the shocking, painful, and embarrassingly understandable reasons behind those words. As buck wild as the plot developments get, there’s a consistent empathy pouring from Sweeney’s pen. While those who screw up aren’t let off easy, there’s a heartfelt acknowledgement that good people sometimes do bad things to try and cope with even worse situations. They struggle, they lash out, they claw at ways to cope, all while stuck staring at the gaping person-shaped hole in their lives. This is not cringe, this is pain, and it forms more bridges between the audience and the characters than it cuts them down.
Twinless is wince-inducing in the best way. Its drama and its comedy are equally brutal, and yet its pacing is so smooth as to feel like all those broken-glass sensations have been ground down into the finest of sparkly dust. James Sweeney expands on his refreshing approach to comedy, with burgeoning talent both as a crafter of personalities and a shepherd of performers, and Dylan O’Brien’s dual roles are as cathartic as they are thoroughly captivating. Take a deep breath, brace yourself, and pair up with this absolute winner.
