‘Twinless’: The Breakout Sundance Movie Everyone Is Buzzing About

PARK CITY, Utah—The thing about being a twin is that everyone is obsessed with me. People find me more interesting than I find myself, all because there’s another dude walking around who looks just like me.

I’ve never found anything particularly special or fascinating about my twin brother and I, besides, you know, being able to communicate telepathically, feel each other’s pain, and conduct magic spells with our mystical twin minds. But without a doubt, whenever someone finds out that I’m a twin, their face lights up and they go, “Oh, that’s so fun!” Usually it’s followed by an inane question, like, “Do you ever trade places?” In high school, one of my teachers asked if he could study us.

This is all to say that people can get super weird about all the twin stuff. The new movie Twinless, which just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, reveals just how weird they can get. Yet through that excessive weirdness, and in ways I haven’t seen in film before, Twinless also beautifully explores what actually is special about the twin relationship; it does so by showing what happens when a twin is gone.

Twinless is written and directed by James Sweeney, who also stars as Dennis. Dennis and Roman, played by Dylan O’Brien in the best performance of his career, meet at a support group for twins grieving the death of their sibling. Roman is quiet, a loner who is unambitious. His dead brother, Rocky, was the charismatic, successful one who everyone gravitated to. But Dennis goes out of his way to lend Roman a compassionate ear.

They connect when Dennis, who is gay, learns that Rocky was gay, too. Almost instantly, Dennis and Roman became best friends, doing everything from grocery shopping together to confiding in each other when they’re up all night in emotional pain.

With Dennis’ help, and through their bonding over losing their respective twin brothers, Roman becomes a better version of himself. So when the film’s big twist happens—it takes place early in the film—it’s absolutely devastating to watch. Warning: We’re going to spoil the twist here, as it’s key to explaining what the film actually is about. But if you’d like the same shocked, gasping experience that everyone in my theater in Park City had, don’t read on.

At one point after establishing how close Dennis and Roman have gotten, Twinless switches perspective. O’Brien, at this point, is playing Rocky, not Roman. Rocky is noticeably more confident and, for lack of a better word, flamboyant than Roman. He unveils his swagger when he walks up to Dennis, a stranger, at a diner and immediately starts hitting on him. Dennis is smitten, bumbling as he receives all of Rocky’s flattery and pick-up lines.

When they get back to Rocky’s apartment and start passionately hooking up, Dennis learns that Rocky is a twin. Dennis, it turns out, is obsessed with twins. As Rocky is thrusting inside him while they have sex, Dennis is a motormouth, asking questions about Rocky and Roman’s relationship. After one particularly great piece of twin trivia, Dennis orgasms.

They continue to chat more tenderly during post-coital pillow talk about what it’s like for Rocky to be a twin, and how his relationship with his brother, Roman, has become strained as they’ve gotten older. It’s the kind of soul-bearing conversation that kicks off relationships, so Dennis becomes understandably infatuated with Rocky. He’s confused, then, when Rocky doesn’t answer his texts about going on another date the next week. When Dennis goes to Rocky’s apartment to find out what’s wrong, he sees that Rocky has a boyfriend.

Dennis sees the couple later that afternoon while he’s driving, heartbroken. He gets out of his career and screams at Rocky, who steps into the street to talk to him. He’s hit by a car and dies.

Yep, Dennis is the reason that Rocky is dead. And, after his death, he starts stalking Roman. That’s how he ended up at the group therapy session where he met Roman. In order to stay, he made up the fact that he has a dead twin, too. The entire friendship with Roman is built on a lie.

The fascinating thing about Twinless is how, even after this reveal, you still root for Dennis and Roman’s friendship. Sweeney’s performance as Dennis is so endearing and heartfelt, that you almost are able to move past judging him for this outrageous, sociopathic lie. And O’Brien delivers a Hall of Fame-level himbo performance, coloring Roman with just enough altruism and good-natured curiosity to mask the fact that he’s a bit of buffoon. (Roman’s affinity for going to the gym is put to gratifying use, too, with O’Brien shirtless or fully naked often.)

They’re a great match for each other, and their friendship clearly enriches both of their lives—even though it’s rooted in deceit and horrible betrayal. Eventually, Roman even finds himself at a place where he’s ready to date. But when he starts a relationship with Dennis’ coworker, who knows that Dennis is an only child and doesn’t have a dead twin, things start to unravel.

Twinless is, it should be said, absolutely hilarious, which you might not expect from all this plot description. Sweeney’s script is packed with observational humor about the absurdity of human interactions, whether it’s the bizarre way people treat you when you’ve lost a loved one, the awkwardness of being in group therapy, or the inappropriate ways coworkers interact with each other.

And while the Big Ole Lie gives the movie its juicy, soap opera-esque tension, it’s the heartbreaking way Roman talks about his late brother that lends it surprising heft. He has to work through the resentment he had over his brother’s success and magnetism, and learn how to hold the memories of their special relationship when they were younger as fuel for getting through the day. Going from “we” to “me” is something that no twin can be prepared for; it doesn’t help how many people in the neighborhood continue to mistake him for Rocky. Roman wasn’t sure what his own identity was when he was part of a pair. Now he must learn it alone.

The deception happens because Dennis is so obsessed with twins when he first meets Rocky. Yet because of that night they shared and the conversations they had post-sex, Dennis is actually able to help Roman heal because he knows how Rocky felt.

Twinless then, is the best kind of movie-watching experience: a truly wild one that swings from outlandish to profound and back again throughout its running time. It’s still early in the festival, but it’s the kind of legitimately funny, moving film—with an ace lead performance from O’Brien—that could turn it into one of Sundance’s biggest hits this year. Everyone I’ve seen in Park City has been raving about it. As a twin myself, I give it a rousing twin endorsement.