The Twin Parent Guide

Rachel (Teresa Palmer), her husband Anthony (Steven Cree), and their son Elliot (Tristan Ruggeri) recently survived a terrible car accident which killed Elliot’s twin brother, Nathan (Tristan Ruggeri). Hoping that a change of scenery will help the family recover from the loss, Anthony moves them from New York to rural Finland, settling in a huge building that used to be a rectory. While Rachel hopes for the best, she finds the locals an unsettling lot until she meets Helen (Barbara Marten), another outsider who fills her in on the town’s ancient and disturbing pagan history. The ominous environment isn’t the only problem: Rachel starts worrying about her son, whose struggles with the loss of his brother are intensifying. Now she wonders if his problems are part of something more nefarious.

I have some serious questions about the protagonists in most horror films. I understand they’re traumatized and grieving, but do they really think that moving to a huge, old, isolated house in the middle of nowhere (in this case in a country where they don’t speak the language) is going to give them the support they need? And, having done it anyway, once they start having terrible nightmares and seeing bizarre and unsettling things, do they really want to stick it out? No one in a horror movie has ever seen a horror movie, or they’d know good and well that everything they’re doing is patently insane.

Any familiarity with basic horror plots would have served the characters well since this is as familiar as horror movies get. You’ve got all the standards - remote house, creepy kid, terrible husband, weird townsfolk, the works. The film doesn’t really do anything different with those elements either, so unless you like watching the re-heated leftovers of other films, this isn’t going to be a winner with genre fans.

On the other hand, since the film has very little gore, extremely limited profanity (although sexual expletives are used), and no sexual content, this isn’t a terrible choice for teens looking for something a little spookier than kids’ horror films. Being teenagers, they’re unlikely to care that the plot is 100% recycled material, although they might be expecting a few more good scares than the film offers. Then again, maybe not. Teenagers are an unpredictable lot.