The Twin: A nice attempt at something different

I'm probably going to end up being a bit nicer to this film than it truly deserves because it has been recently pointed out to me that I am being a bit too critical of films lately and basically saying that everything sucks. To be fair to me, this is because most of what I have been watching lately has failed to captivate me in any sort of meaningful way and I blame Netflix and Hollywood for this mostly. They just seem to crank out the same garbage over and over again and stick to a script with only slightly different characters and plots. This is the reason for my pessimism.

I'll go ahead and be nice to The Twin because even though I didn't think it was excellent at least it was unique in SOME capacity and that's a good thing.

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I'm going to be intentionally vague about the story here because in order to enjoy this movie there are some key elements that need to remain unknown. I couldn't tell what was going on and the story-telling was successful in duping me into believing exactly what they wanted me to.

Basically, a family suffers the loss of one of their children in a car accident and this is not a spoiler because it is revealed in the first few minutes of the film and also the trailer. They are traumatized by this as one would expect and this in-particular effects the mother of the twins who now is ultra-protective of her one remaining son.

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She watches his every move, wont let him out of her sight, and becomes irrationally upset with him and others whenever he does things that a kid would do like go explore in the woods just a few hundred meters away from where she is standing. Because of this, she is incapable of functioning in society so her husband makes the decision to relocate his family back to rural Finland, where he is from. The community there is awaiting their return and has been informed of her mental state and they all try to chip in to help her with her mental state.

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This community has a lot of twists and turns though and the director does a good job of making us, the audience, believe that there might be something evil about it but we cannot determine if it is the community, or the mother that is to blame for this perception of the area being perhaps sinister.

Strange things begin to happen, in particular to her son who develops an imaginary friend who just happens to be his dead twin brother that of course no one else can see because he isn't really there - or is he?

During the film the audience, or at least me, are constantly trying to guess what the real evil is here because at times we are left to ponder if it is the boy, the community, or even the father or mother that are the true evil in this story.

A horror movie at its root, The Twin will keep you guessing throughout the just over 100 minutes of runtime.

It is also important to note that while almost all of the film is in English, the film was made by a Finnish production company and is one of the only Finnish movies that I have ever seen.

Should I watch it?

Overall I think this movie is good because it is different than most everything else out there in the horror genre at the moment. It almost has a Korean feel to it because you never have a total grasp on what the hell is going on. I find this sort of story-telling to be refreshing because it isn't just a simple cookie-cutter copy of everything else. That being said, it certainly isn't the best film I have seen in a while and I may be giving it higher marks than it deserves simply because most of what I have been watching lately has been pretty damn terrible.

Most of the actors are really great in their roles except for perhaps Tristan Ruggeri who plays the role of the child and this is just my own personal bias since I generally don't like child actors.

I say give it a go if for no other reason than for the fact that you probably won't be able to guess how it ends and that to me is always fun