Twinless Review: Dylan O'Brien gets a chance to show his skills in an inventive but frequently flawed comedy

The narrative around Twinless is a familiar one. A fresh, tragicomic film, it's the kind that feels like it emerges out of the festival circuit almost every year like clockwork. Finally getting it’s wide UK release over a year after its initial Sundance premiere, Twinless is the latest of these, the actor in this case being Dylan O’Brien. 

Dylan O’Brien plays Roman, an angry young man who has just lost his twin brother, Rocky (also O’Brien). In an attempt to work through his grief, Roman stays in his brother’s apartment and goes to a support group for bereaved twins, where he meets Dennis (played by writer/director/producer of the film James Sweeney). Dennis sets out to befriend Roman for a series of reasons that create much of the film’s tension and comedy.

Much of the hype around the film stems from that around O’Brien and his dual roles. While working consistently since his Teen Wolf days, O’Brien has not had a lot of opportunities to show off what he can do with his parts in recent years. Despite having plenty of performances I really enjoy – I will take the chance to highlight his very fun turn in the underseen 2022 film The Outfit – Twinless offers a part with more weight for him to sink his teeth into.

In light of the recent dearth of dual performances that 2025 bought, O’Brien here is not one of my favourites. He only plays the one twin for the vast majority of the film, not giving us much time to see him as Rocky, but the difference is drawn with very broad strokes. He affects a deep voice for Roman, and a lighter pitch for Rocky. Roman has closely cut hair and stubble, Roman, a big 70s moustache and a quiff. The differences are hardly subtle, and leave both performances feeling a tad cartoonish, although that is just as much to do with the writing O’Brien is given to work with.

His performance as Roman is by far the better of the two though, he gives the character more depth than he may otherwise have and is quite delightful when delivering deadpan lines that portray Roman as a bit of an idiot (when asked his type in women he can only think to say “I like boobs”).

https://youtu.be/pxseQQkGvb8

Surprisingly however, I think it would be untrue to call O’Brien’s character the lead. After about 20 minutes, the film begins to focus on Dennis, his relationship with the deceased Rocky shown to us in flashback. This leads to a reframing of his relationship with Roman that shapes the rest of the film. The character of Dennis is admirably messy; Sweeney does not shy away from making his own character an unlikable, neurotic, loser. It allows the film to be far more morally ambiguous and lends its comedy a darker streak.

While it is certainly an interesting decision to follow Dennis's point of view, it sometimes feels like a bit of a misstep. He does not have a particularly compelling emotional arc, essentially following the classic 'liar revealed' narrative we’ve seen many times over. Roman is a far more interesting character going through a more complex chain of events that the film sidesteps to further focus on Dennis feeling sorry for himself.

A key example of this would be Roman’s relationship with his mother, played by Lorelai Gilmore herself, Lauren Graham. The pair only share a couple of scenes, but those they do are the most authentic and arresting the film gets. The pair have an incredibly tense, bordering on unpleasant, dynamic that feels visceral and explores grief in a far stronger way than the rest of the film. One can’t help but feel that if Sweeney was able to juggle this parent/child dynamic alongside the comic focus of Dennis, the film would be all the better for it. 

There are real shining moments in the film. The premise is strong, and only made stronger by the fact it is willing to get weird. When it gets it right, it is also very funny – not every joke got a laugh out of me, but that does not take away from the fact there is some very good comic writing from Sweeney here. But that just makes the film’s lower points all the more frustrating. I found myself rooting for the film to win me all the way over and it never quite did.

★★★