Shudder Secrets: The Twin: A Dose of Grief with a Folk Horror Twist

If I can point to one major trend in horror within the last few years, it’s the exploration of grief. Think Hereditary, Midsommar, Relic, or Shudder’s Son. All these films use the genre as a vehicle to explore loss. Of course, this isn’t anything new. The Changeling did this brilliantly in 1980. There are countless other examples, too. But lately, it seems more frequent.

The trend continues with Shudder’s latest original feature, The Twin. Shot in Finland, director Taneli Mustonen’s film deals with a grieving mother who lost her son in a car crash. The surviving twin, meanwhile, apparently sees his dead brother. Oh, and there’s a wild folk-horror story, too. This makes for some gnarly visuals and callbacks. When this movie works and isn’t bogged down by its own weight and some of the side stories, it is an affecting film. The mother’s pain becomes gut-wrenching. The effects the loss has on the family are well-played and well-scripted.

That said, there are some elements of this movie that deserve some major unpacking, so let’s explore. Some spoilers are included below.

The Loss and the Ghosts That Follow

Minutes into the film, we see mom Rachel (Teresa Palmer) driving the car before the accident occurs. This sets up the loss that permeates throughout the rest of the narrative. Rightfully so, Rachel is utterly tormented by the death of her son. Because of the profound grief, her hubby, Anthony (Steven Cree), moves the family from New York to a rural village in Finland. He means well, I suppose, but this decision is more his doing than Rachel’s. She’s totally out of her element and viewed as an outcast by the strange villagers. Anthony, however, fits right in.

More importantly, something weird occurs once the family moves. The surviving son, Elliot (Tristan Ruggeri), claims to see and hear his dead twin. It’s bizarre yes, but creepy kids have long been part of the horror tradition. These occurrences ramp up, to the point where Elliot sleeps in his brother Nathan’s bed, plays toy cars with his ghost, and refuses to let Rachel pack up and donate Nathan’s toys. It gets to the point where Elliot stomps and screams that he’s Nathan, not Elliot. Is he possessed by the dearly departed? At first, it seems like a possibility.

The film’s stellar cinematography and score enhance the spookiness. The house looks like something straight out of a Shirley Jackson or Poe story. It has that Gothic feel, enhanced by frequent interior shots of shadowy rooms and fog rolling across the landscape. The house also feels much too big for a small family. Both Daniel Lindholm’s cinematography and Panu Aaltio’s score are incredibly haunting. Combined, they create an eerie and striking tone and initially, make it seem like The Twin is a good old-fashioned ghost tale. However, it takes a rather abrupt shift by the halfway point, leaning into folk-horror.

Rachel’s Dreams and How a Family Grieves

The Twin blends reality and fiction, to the point where it’s unclear what’s real and what isn’t. This works at times, but not always. However, Rachel’s manifestation of her grief is generally well-executed. She continually has a reoccurring dream where she’s at a funeral. Upon the first glimpse into her troubled mind, one would assume she’s reliving Nathan’s funeral. She confesses that as the casket lowers to the ground that she’s the “only one who can hear him screaming.” However, she’s not talking about Nathan. She’s talking about Elliot. She adds, “When I finally get the lid open….I see Elliot. He’s so beautiful. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him, too.” Later, she admits to Anthony that sometimes she feels like she wasn’t a good mom. These fears about motherhood are also common in horror. The Babadook is one more recent example.

These reoccurring dream sequences come in bits and fragments. They’re great visual representations of Rachel’s pain. Further, from the get-go, she indeed fears losing Elliot. Not long after they move, she freaks out when he wanders out of her sight for a few minutes. Based on the loss she already experienced, her reaction is warranted.

While the dream is a representation of Rachel’s grief, there are moments when Anthony grieves, too. He often turns to the bottle and opens a box that belonged to Nathan. He clenches a picture of his son and in one brief scene, sheds some tears. This, too, is a realistic representation.

Cue the Devil

The Twin may have worked better if it remained a ghost story that focused on a family’s loss, especially the mother’s reaction. However, by the mid-way point, it morphs into strange and sometimes clunky folk horror. Rachel’s only local friend is Helen (Barbara Marten), a wise elderly woman who claims the entire village is built on pagan land. Anytime anyone tried to build a church on said land, it burned down. She claims Rachel’s dead son was a sacrifice to the devil, and the devil wants Elliot as well. There’s also an unusual side plot about the devil hungering to return in the flesh, using Rachel as a vessel. At least I think I got that right. It’s a bit convoluted and doesn’t quite add up. Oh, and all the land and waterways are one big circle, all leading to a sacrificial rock.

Regardless, this leads to more reality-bending scenes involving several villagers in robes, sacrifice, rituals, and blood. These scenes are visually impressive, but the whole folk-horror subplot collapses under its own weight. When they dress Rachel in a white robe and a crown of flowers, it’s a nice callback to films like The Blood on Satan’s Claw, or, more recently, Midsommar. It’s a visual feast for sure, but in the context of the film, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Maybe it’s another one of Rachel’s nightmares, but it comes across as too heavy-handed to work.

Back to Reality

The film’s last act bounces back and forth between dream-like states and reality. Eventually, Anthony gives a rather long exposition dump explaining everything. There are plenty of visual clues earlier in the film to support what he says. So his reveal may not shock every viewer. However, his explanation for everything, and I mean literally everything, including Elliot’s strange behavior, feels too cheap. It’s like the writers didn’t know what to do with the folk-horror storyline. They had to write themselves out of it somehow, and it feels like a cheat.

That said, despite some of the film’s flaws, the movie does succeed at offering a realistic portrayal of grief. Palmer especially excels in her role as Rachel, a tormented mother just trying to keep it together in a community where she constantly feels like an outcast. While Cree’s performance sometimes comes across as a little stiff, in the moments when we do see his character grieve, he, like his counterpart, offers a real and honest portrayal of the type of pain that comes from losing a kid.

You can even read Elliot’s claims that he frequently sees and hears his dead brother as a manifestation of his pain, at least if you discount the haphazard last act. The Twin excels at showing how these different family members grieve. None of it comes across as one-note. Loss becomes a ghost the family can’t shake, and they all deal with it in their own ways. Maybe there isn’t really a dead twin terrifying the family and possessing Elliot.  This all circles back to a family’s mourning. Their new, tragic reality is reinforced by the foreboding score, a cold landscape, and dark interior shots of the home’s quiet rooms. The Twin succeeds when it keeps the story small and personal.

The Twin drops on Shudder May 6. For more on the streaming service’s original and exclusive content, be sure to check out my weekly Shudder Secrets column.