Teresa Palmer plays Rachel, a woman who is distraught after an accident that causes the death of one of her twin sons. Her husband, Anthony (Steven Cree), wants to help make things better, and so they end up moving to a new home for a fresh start. But it's not long until Rachel starts to freak out, worried that some supernatural force is after her surviving son, Elliot (Tristan Ruggeri). Is something spooky and evil happening, and do other people around her know all about it?
Directed by Taneli Mustonen, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Aleksi Hyvärinen, The Twin is the kind of horror film so bad and predictable that it feels as if those who made it have absolutely no knowledge of the genre whatsoever. Mustonen and Hyvärinen previously gave us Lake Bodom, which also suffered from a mix of predictability and some bizarre decisions made by the film-makers, but this is a big step back from that. Where Lake Bodom was flawed, it was at least flawed in a way that felt as if those behind the camera were trying to do something different. The Twin feels very much like people trying to craft a collage of horror movie moments.
Palmer is actually quite good in the main role. She's someone I have always generally enjoyed onscreen, although maybe rarely someone I would think of as a first choice for any role, and here she has to be dour and on edge for almost the entire runtime, something that she manages well. She's a sad, broken, woman, although she is also asked to give a performance that is constantly set at 11. I also thought Ruggeri was decent enough, playing the child who may or may not be different from how they were pre-accident. Barbara Marten is a welcome addition, playing someone who thinks she may be able to help Rachel, and it's a great shame that her character ultimately serves no purpose. The weak link is Cree, playing the caring, but frustrated, husband in a way that is far too passive. He's almost just a bit of set dressing in many scenes, someone who appears just to make you think of how many other, better, actors could have been given his role. They might not have done any better, but they wouldn't have been any worse.
With one or two decent moments in the first hour, The Twin really takes a turn as it moves into the third act. You end up willing it not to go in a direction you suspect it is going in . . . and then it goes there. And it doesn't just go there, it goes there hard. Doubling down on a central plot point that is as ridiculous as it is obvious, it ultimately feels like a waste of everyone's time. I guarantee you that even the most horror-averse movie viewer will see where this is going from very early on, and any attempts to trick viewers feel contrived and dishonest. Nothing is earned here, and nothing much really has any actual consequence, when you think it all through. I'll give it points for looking decent enough, for Palmer, and for having some individual moments that would have been more appreciated in a better movie, but this is one to avoid.
3/10
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