By Jason Osiason

Few films capture the messiness of grief quite like Twinless. It’s not just about loss—it’s about how identity fractures in the wake of it, how memory bends to fit the stories we tell ourselves, and how the people we love the most can also be the ones who destroy us. The film follows twin brothers, Roman and Rocky, who have spent years apart, living wildly different lives. When circumstances force them back together, old wounds resurface, and what starts as a tentative reconciliation spirals into something much more twisted.

Dylan O’Brien delivers an absolute powerhouse of a performance, playing both brothers with such precision that you forget it’s the same actor. Roman is composed, methodical, almost eerily controlled. Rocky is volatile, chaotic, driven by impulse. Every glance, every shift in body language, every subtle flicker of resentment between them feels lived-in and real. And then there’s that role-playing monologue—one of the most emotionally shattering scenes of the year, a moment so raw and unguarded it feels like watching a wound split open in real-time.

The film walks a tightrope between dark humor and genuine heartbreak. There are moments of sharp, biting comedy, but the laughs always feel uneasy, sitting right next to something devastating. It’s the kind of humor that creeps in at the worst possible moments, the way people joke when they’re too afraid to confront what’s actually happening. The deeper the film goes, the more it twists itself into a puzzle of shifting truths, of fractured perspectives, of two people desperately trying to make sense of who they are in relation to each other.

Visually, it’s just as bold as its storytelling. The split-screen work doesn’t just separate the brothers—it makes you feel the distance between them, the way they occupy the same spaces but will never quite fit together. It’s probably the best use of the technique since 500 Days of Summer, but where that film played with perspective in romance, this one uses it for tension, for unraveling deception, for showing how two people can share the same past but tell completely different stories about it. And the delayed title sequence? A masterstroke, dropping right when the film pulls the rug out from under you.

Twinless is the kind of film that gets under your skin. It’s constantly shifting, keeping you off-balance, revealing new layers with every scene. James Sweeney directs with an unnerving sense of control, guiding the film through twists that never feel forced but inevitable, like a slow-motion car crash you can’t look away from. It’s rare to find a film that balances this much humor, sadness, and psychological tension without losing itself. One of the most surprising, unsettling, and emotionally bruising films of the festival. [B+]