Look, I'm a sucker for Sundance. A lot of the time it's all grim documentaries and prestige dramas you'll never get around to watching. But every so often, a little film slips through—a weird, honest, chaotic thing that reminds you why you got into this whole movie business in the first place.
This year, that film was James Sweeney's Twinless. And the official trailer from Roadside Attractions just dropped, which means it's time for us to have a talk.
You know James Sweeney. He directed Straight Up—that hyper-verbal, kinda stressful, kinda brilliant movie a few years back. The man has a voice. It's sharp, it's anxious, and it's always digging for something real beneath the surface. With Twinless, he's gone even further. He's starring in it, too. He's a busy guy.
The premise? Pure gold. Dylan O'Brien plays a set of twins, Roman and Rocky. One of them… is no longer with us. The one who remains, Roman, is lost. And he ends up in a support group. Which, okay. Pretty standard grief stuff. But then he meets Dennis (Sweeney), another guy who's lost his other half. What follows is a friendship—then a romance—between two guys who are maybe, probably, definitely a little bit too broken to be starting anything.
The trailer is a masterclass in tone, walking that high-wire between genuinely dark humor and sincere emotional honesty. It's funny. The jokes land. But you feel the ache, too. That opening line, about not knowing which “version of me” to be—the one that was part of a whole, or the one that's left behind? Brutal. It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a film that premiered to a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. That's a score that doesn't happen by accident.
I saw it mentioned as one of the best comedies out of Sundance this year. It played Tribeca, too. The word on the street, the chatter in the festival hallways… was that this thing had a pulse. That it was doing something new with the old “love story” format. Something messy. Something human.
And, as the trailer hints, it's all set to blow up in their faces when some secrets come out. Sweeney's character, Dennis, is hiding something, and so is O'Brien's Roman. Also, there's Aisling Franciosi, who plays Dennis's co-worker. She's the catalyst for the whole thing to unravel, and her performance… yeah. It's subtle, but you just know she's going to be the firestarter in the whole mess.
So, when does all this awkward, emotional chaos hit the big screen? Mark your calendars. Twinless is coming to select US theaters on September 5, 2025. You should go. You should watch it. Because while it might just be the best dark comedy of the year, it also might just make you feel something. And that's a dangerous thing. A real dangerous thing.
