We’re taught that grief brings people together. In Twinless, writer, director and actor James Sweeney magnifies mourning as a form of isolation – one that reshapes how a person understands themselves, and how they seek connection in its aftermath.
A dark comedy, Twinless follows the unexpected bond between Roman (Dylan O’Brien) and Dennis (James Sweeney), two men brought together through a twin bereavement support group. Drawn toward the kind of kinship they’ve lost, their connection quickly intensifies as they attempt to make sense of what it means to live in the shadow of someone else’s absence.
The film opens with a unique breed of awkwardness reserved only for grief, marked by stilted exchanges and uncomfortable reactions of those who don’t know how to respond. This is compounded for a grieving twin, who must withstand strangers crying at the likeness of their face, or being mistaken altogether for the twin they’ve just lost. The same uncomfortable tension is depicted in Dennis’ perspective, where it manifests as an acute sense of isolation, and an anxious need to hold on to his newfound friend.
Though not a twin himself, Sweeney was obsessed with twins as an only child, desperately seeking a built-in best friend as he moved around military bases with his parents. The idea for Twinless originally came to him in 2015 after discovering the existence of such support groups and the devastating nature of this style of loss, and gestated for over a decade, forming slowly through countless late-night rewrites as he worked on other projects – most notably his feature film, Straight Up (2019), a dryly funny debut that marked him as a writer-director to watch.
“I was literally rewriting some scenes on set,” he reveals. He likens his writing process to sculpting, carefully adjusting the balance of each scene’s intention through a slow refining process. “Time helps give me perspective, because I can love something and take two weeks away from it and hate it, and then six months later, think it’s not so bad. It’s like an ever-moving painting.”
Even within that constant state of revision, there were moments that felt unmistakably resolved. “That’s the life of a writer,” he shrugs. “It’s never finished, you just have to let it go.” He admits, however, that he felt particularly proud after writing a poignant monologue for Roman. The speech occurs during a pivotal conversation with Dennis, where he breaks down the complex grief, guilt, and fractured identity he feels following Rocky’s death. “This will sound so egotistical, but I remember doing a revision of his speech where I made myself cry,” he shares. “I just felt so connected to Roman, and I think he’s such a sweetie. That’s when I felt like I had really tapped into something that felt emotionally authentic.”
That emotional authenticity doesn’t remain on the page. In Twinless, it carries through to the performances themselves, and nowhere more so than in Sweeney’s own unhingedly precise turn as Dennis. His humour is resolutely sharp and often feels pitched directly to the audience, creating a quiet complicity that deepens the character’s isolation.
This will sound so egotistical, but I remember doing a revision of his speech where I made myself cry. I just felt so connected to Roman, and I think he’s such a sweetie. That’s when I felt like I had really tapped into something that felt emotionally authentic.
Sweeney’s deadpan restraint is balanced by O’Brien, whose rawer, more volatile expression of grief anchors the film. Where Dennis chases closeness as a means of survival, Roman internalises his anger, grief and guilt in a performance that earned widespread praise. Following the film’s Sundance premiere, Twinless took home the Audience Award, O’Brien was recognised with the festival’s Performance Award, and has since appeared on numerous ‘best films’ lists for 2025. The role comes among a confident return to the foreground of Hollywood for O’Brien, who has shown a growing instinct for choosing unexpected, character-driven projects that showcase the breadth of his talent.
Twinless remains deliberately insular, its world populated by surprisingly few supporting figures in order to intensify the fragile two-person dynamic at its core. Within that narrowed frame, Marcie (Aisling Franciosi), Dennis’ co-worker and the object of Roman’s cautious optimism, becomes especially impactful, grounding the film’s tentative romantic thread with warmth and restraint, while brief appearances – including one from Heated Rivalry favourite François Arnaud – complement Dennis’ carefully maintained ecosystem. “We had been greenlit two weeks before the WGA strike, so once we finally got set for pre-production, casting happened really fast. There were complications, but also some really wonderful surprises in the casting process, and both Aisling and François were last-minute casting pitches,” he shares. “Aisling is such a special performer. I didn’t even have time to watch her body of work prior to [casting her], which in hindsight I think is good, now that I have seen her work, because nothing would have useful. She’s so different in everything else she’s done prior to Twinless.”
The film’s intimacy is underscored by a fluency in generational shorthand, drawing on references that feel immediately familiar to millennial and Gen-Z viewers. Rocky finds solace in killing his Sims avatars, a ritual he once shared with his brother, while his growing friendship with Dennis is marked by games like Chubby Bunny and fleeting moments of humour amid grief. The film also references The Giving Tree, Roman’s favourite childhood book, which he gifts to Dennis for Christmas. Long held up as a lesson in unconditional love by generations of 80s, 90s and early-2000s children, the story has since been widely re-examined as a troubling allegory of self-erasure and unreciprocated devotion. In Twinless, its presence subtly mirrors the film’s central tension, between care and co-dependency, and the lengths people go to in order to avoid being alone.
That same sensitivity carries through to the film’s direction. Sweeney approaches Twinless with a measured, almost deferential visual style, allowing unease to surface gradually rather than forcing it into view. He favours obstructed frames and extended pull-backs, visual choices that leave Dennis isolated within the image long before his loneliness is fully articulated.
Sweeney’s most overt visual intervention comes in the form of split-screen, deployed during a Halloween party where Roman and Dennis drift apart among the crowd. Rarely used this effectively since 500 Days of Summer, the technique creates a subtle see-saw of emotion, charting Roman’s growing optimism against Dennis’ burgeoning resentment. “It was a low budget film, so some of these choices were guided by: what do I have time for?” he admits. “But I do remember rewriting the party scene, as it wasn’t a split-screen in the initial draft, in either 2019 or 2020.” It’s the evolution of a shot he experimented with in Straight Up, and hones in on the dual perspective throughout the film. “Initially, you see the story solely from Roman’s perspective, and then through Dennis’ eyes. Since both of those chapters are book-ended with these monologues, I wanted to clearly signify a new visual grammar for the rest of the film. The split-screen was a way to communicate that moving forward, we were going to be sharing both perspectives, and it helped me reset the framework.”
Initially, you see the story solely from Roman’s perspective, and then through Dennis’ eyes. Since both of those chapters are book-ended with these monologues, I wanted to clearly signify a new visual grammar for the rest of the film. The split-screen was a way to communicate that moving forward, we were going to be sharing both perspectives, and it helped me reset the framework.
Sweeney makes a joke about the expense of the film’s music licensing, but in reality it was money well spent. Throughout, the most touching scenes are soundtracked to perfection, whether it be Haim’s “Leaning On You” over montage of the pair finding a familiar rhythm with one another, Jennifer Paige’s “Crush” plays as they attend a Halloween party and meet new potential matches, or Lykke Li’s “Sadness Is A Blessing” as Roman grapples with his grief.
Sweeney attests this to his music supervisor, Lauren Fay Levy, who also worked on Straight Up. “She has great taste, and is sort of an encyclopedia, and has a very varied influences, and she has exposed me to a lot of artists that I would otherwise never know,” he shares. She pushed for Bullion’s “We Had a Good Time” for the end credits, which Sweeney admits he wasn’t originally a fan of. But after uncovering a light sequence shot by his Director of Photography during the art exhibition scene, the lens flares aligned with the song almost perfectly. “The song is about lightning striking twice,” he explains. “It’s subtle, but it’s very powerful to me. Lyrically, I loved that.”
The most poignant sonic moment comes from twin musicians Evan and Jaron’s “Crazy For This Girl”, which recurs several times throughout the film as Roman’s preferred road trip soundtrack. “It’s the iconic twin song that I knew from growing up,” says Sweeney. “It felt like a song that every twin born in that era would know, and would be something Roman and Dennis would easily bond over.” Sweeney met the musical duo at the film’s premiere. “That was a real pinch-me moment,” he shares.
These careful details cement the reality of Twinless, as does Sweeney’s perspective as a queer writer and director, as the film navigates Roman’s relationship with both Rocky and Dennis, both of whom are gay. In a cinematic landscape where queer stories that receive mainstream acclaim still skew heavily toward romantic narratives and traumatic histories, Twinless refracts its study of loneliness through queerness, deepening its interrogation of friendship, co-dependency, and the desire to feel unconditionally known.
“I think I looked at the fantasy of twindom and the projection of queerness as opposite ends [of a spectrum],” he explains. “When you think of being a twin, you think of unconditional love, and I think a part of being a queer person is feeling that love is very conditional. To me, I think that’s part of what attracts Dennis to the fantasy of being a twin, the idea of somebody who sees you and loves you limitlessly. In reality, being a twin is not a monolithic experience, and we see that twins can be very lonely, as is the case with Roman’s fractured relationship with Rocky.”
The stories that we want to tell are reflections of our experiences that aren’t being told otherwise. If we don’t find the resilience to tell those stories, then who the fuck else will?
That emotional specificity allows the film to resist easy conclusions. “I feel like I’ve been on a diatribe lately,” Sweeney grimaces. “I’m trying to continue making original, contemporary films, but it’s just so hard. Sometimes, fighting against the current can exhaust you.” He’s careful not to frame queer filmmakers as uniquely equipped to tell these stories, instead describing them as necessary: “I think it’s more about where our heart is, and the stories that we want to tell are reflections of our experiences that aren’t being told otherwise. If we don’t find the resilience to tell those stories, then who the fuck else will?”
As the film draws to a close, Twinless offers no grand resolution, only a tentative reckoning. “People say ‘just be yourself’, but what version of me? I hate most of them,” Dennis ponders at the duo’s final on-screen meeting, as they split a sandwich. Forgiveness is framed not as absolution, but as something ongoing and unfinished, bound up in the uneasy task of seeing one another clearly – without fantasy, and without replacement.
His frank responses situate Twinless within a wider commitment to telling stories on his own terms: “I think we’d all love to get paid more and be mainstream. Maybe not; maybe some people are more punk than I am. I’m just trying to find an audience for the stories I want to tell.”
TWINLESS is in UK & Irish cinemas now. For cinemas visit: https://bit.ly/m/twinlessfilm/ PARK CIRCUS
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