I was really, really digging The Twin (Taneli Mustonen, 2022) through most of its run time! Then came the film's ending, and I was so outraged. Outraged!
Sometime in the 1980s, Rachel (Teresa Palmer) and Anthony (Steven Cree) are struggling with immeasurable grief, as they lost one of their twin sons, Nathan, in a car accident. Haunted by this incident, they leave New York City with their son, Elliot, in tow, and travel to Anthony's homeland, a small village in Finland (it was actually shot in Estonia). The majority of the film takes place here, as the couple and their son hastily move into a giant house in the Finnish countryside in order to start anew. The house in which the film is set has multiple floors, and seems to be the setting for a former funeral home or mortuary? It's kind of unclear. Elliot immediately decides to live at the very top of the house, in the attic, with a super sinister round window at the top, and asks that Mom and Dad put a twin bed in for his dear, departed twin. Rachel acquiesces to his request, while Anthony immediately pushes back, suggesting that this situation is exactly what "the doctor" warned against. This set up easily slides into the Haunted Heroine horror film, where a female protagonist struggles with seemingly supernatural events, while everyone else--the local folk, Anthony, and even Elliot--actively question every single move that Rachel makes. Yet, there's a ton of creepy stuff afoot.
First, the family visits a local pagan shrine, where if you press your hand against the red handprints on the rock, and make a wish, your wish very well might come true. Elliot proceeds to "make a wish," and you just know he's wishing for his brother's return. Then at a welcoming party that the family attends, everyone seems to ignore Rachel, except for the elderly Helen (Barbara Marten), who the villagers believe has a screw loose. She pulls Rachel aside and tells her that she dreamed of her, and that her son has made a wish, and it was granted. Ruh-roh. Not only is Rachel not fitting in, but she and Anthony are compelled to climb onto some giant wooden "wedding" swing as another "pagan" tradition of the town. As the pagan traditions start to add up, I was getting really excited about a potential Folk Horror title to add to my very long list. Helen appears to be the only person really willing to talk to Rachel, or take her seriously, especially when Elliot disappears, and then comes back, claiming that he's Nathan. Sure, Helen equates pagans with Satanists, which is rally sloppy for 2022, but I went with it.
The strange folk of their new town are rendered stranger at every turn. At first, they stand around silently, looking disapproving and whispering behind Rachel's back. Then her visit to the doctor about Elliot's claims (that he's Nathan) just serves to piss her off. Helen then brings up a cockamamie story about her husband being possessed by some demon, his face twisted into an obscene grimace as he dies a pretty awful death. There's even one scene that juxtaposes Teresa's weird nightmares/visions with Helen's to suggest that these two women are struggling within a foreign environment (Helen is British) intent on destroying them. At this point in the film, like Rachel, viewers do not trust anyone, especially Anthony, who comes from this pretty grim place. Helen also suggests that there are some weird town-related conspiracies involving circles, and we then see numerous rituals on bleak hillsides, where the strange folk are standing in circles, doing who knows what.
If not for Teresa Palmer's persuasive portrayal of Rachel, this film would be dead from the start, but she's so convincing, that viewers care about the stakes here. The husband and son are not very well-developed, but after they move to Finland, Anthony comes across as a gaslighting mastermind, who has the whole town convinced that Rachel needs medicating. In fact, there are numerous shots of Rachel waking up in bed after being dosed with a hypodermic. What are these people up to, you wonder, as clumps of townsfolk stare, and stare at her. As I said, the explanation jettisons all the potential Folk Horror/possession/haunting possibilities. **SPOILERS FOLLOW Turns out, according to that jerk, Anthony, that he and Rachel never had a twin, that Nathan died in a car crash where Rachel was driving, and that she's just crazy, hallucinating another twin when there isn't one. Oh, and Helen's clearly crazy too, just as the rest of the town thinks she is. Sure, the Haunted Heroine narrative always oscillates between supernatural happenings and unreliable narrator madness, but something about The Twin felt cheap and dirty in choosing to end the film this way. Leaving the cemetery one last time, with her family's two gravestones in front of her, Rachel climbs into her car to discover that EVERYONE'S ALIVE, including the imaginary twin she created. Basically, the ending completely negates all of the spooky stuff happening throughout the earlier portions of the film, rendering any supernatural questions pointless. The "it was all just a dream/delusion" finale does not feel earned, and I'm still angry at the bait-and-switch. Perhaps the "she was always just insane" approach has worn thin for me, but The Twin, now streaming on Shudder, disappoints. NOT recommended.
