Directed and co-written by Taneli Mustonen, The Twin is truly a tale as old as, what seems like, the beginning of time, taking the color-by-numbers premise of an upper-class family succumbing to their psyches once they escape to the pagan/paranormal countryside after the loss of their child. A film that builds a seemingly promising and tragic folk-horror film that instead veers into a psycho-thriller premise as needed, The Twin is not confusing to follow and yet the story seemed confused as to what it wanted to be.

With dialogue that seemed unnatural and with The Twin being a hodgepodge of genre ideas, I could not help but feel as though this was some sort of an AI-driven concoction, putting together things that humans seemingly would like, but in an uncanny way that only seemed more and more lost after its plot took one too many turns.

After a car accident ends in the death of their young son Nathan (Tristan Ruggeri), Rachel (Teresa Palmer), her husband Anthony (Steven Cree), and their surviving son Elliot (also Tristan Ruggeri) move from America to Finland in hopes of a fresh start… in an old, remote home among stoic neighbors whom she cannot communicate with. After Elliot makes a wish, his dream becomes the family’s nightmare as Rachel begins to suspect that something is amiss in their home, and begins to learn of their new community’s history of possession and folklore.

I am afraid that I had issues with the delivery of the dialogue and the writing in The Twin. I found quite a few instances of seemingly over the top acting where the scene did not warrant such a reaction and it seemed almost laughable, and yet somehow in other scenes, the performances were unnaturally underwhelming. The screenwriting for The Twin seemed to allow for quite a few plot holes, with the story contradicting earlier events, all in the name of attempting to orchestrate things I clocked from the outset of the film.

The saving grace of The Twin was the cinematography and editing, which had the seemingly difficult task of stringing together a sometimes nonsensical script in an aesthetically pleasing way. In the end, it became clear that many of the scenes, characters, conversations, and shots were filler — one character in particular, who I actually really liked as she brought a sense of mystery and occultism to the film, might have made more sense in a movie all of her own rather than in this movie, and her removal from this film might have actually helped the story make more sense.

The Twin did have great direction aesthetically, with picturesque framing and editing that kept things moving at a brisk pace. However, the story itself was lacking direction, undecided on if it wanted to be a pagan folk-horror or a psychological thriller. I could not help but draw parallels between Ari Aster’s celebrated horror films, as The Twin felt like a mashup of ideas from Hereditary and Midsommar.

The Twin looked like any moderate to well-produced film, and the setting of Finland added an otherwordly feel to the attempted tense atmosphere, but aesthetics can only carry a film so far, especially one that was meant to be a layered psychological thriller but turned out to be one stinking red herring that was left out too long.

The cliche nature of the film can be forgiven and Teresa Palmer’s charisma was as effervescent as ever, but The Twin was not creepy or horrific like I was hoping — every jump scare fell flat, and other aspects would have perhaps been better had the team stuck to a paranormal/pagan story. The Twin manages to be watchable overall, it is cliche and fits right in with other so-so Shudder distributed films, where it will become available starting on May 6.

6.5 out of 10