Grief in Duplicate: Dylan O’Brien Shines in Twinless

there will be spoilers ahead

Grief on screen can often feel distant, tidy, and processed for comfort. Twinless refuses all that. It’s an unflinching, painfully intimate study of loss and identity, anchored by an extraordinary performance from Dylan O’Brien that to me is the best work of his career.

O’Brien plays Roman, a young man haunted by the death of his identical twin, Rocky. Searching for connection, he joins a support group for “twinless twins,” where he meets Dennis (played with eerie restraint and aching vulnerability by James Sweeney). The two form a fragile friendship that feels like mutual healing until it isn’t.

As the truth begins to surface, that Dennis never had a twin and was secretly involved with Rocky before his death, the film shifts from quiet melancholy into a gut-punch of betrayal. The reveal scene between Roman and Dennis is almost unbearable in its intimacy. There’s no dramatic score or cinematic trickery, just raw emotion and silence, with O’Brien’s face moving through disbelief, disgust, and heartbreak in a matter of seconds. You can feel the air leave the room as Roman realizes that the person who seemed to understand his pain most deeply had built that closeness on a lie.

What could have played as melodrama instead becomes something devastatingly human.

But the film’s soul lies in one moment: Roman’s monologue in the hotel room. I also loved that we’re seeing this from Dennis’s perspective with o’brien staring right into the camera. The scene begins almost awkwardly, with Roman fumbling for words, talking to his dead brother as if he’s still in the room: “Yeah, so you’re dead now. That’s what you get for not looking both ways.” It’s bitter and broken all at once. What follows is a slow emotional unspooling with anger turning to guilt, guilt turning to love, and love collapsing into unbearable loneliness.

When Roman admits, “I can’t control my anger. I’m sorry I blew up on you when you told me you liked guys. I wish I could take it back,” O’Brien’s delivery doesn’t feel performed, it feels lived. His voice cracks, his breathing stumbles, his whole body trembles like someone finally confronting a truth they’ve avoided for too long. And when he breaks down whispering, “I don’t know how to fucking be here without you,” the entire film seems to stop breathing with him.

It’s a scene that could have easily gone too big or too showy in lesser hands.

But O’Brien approaches it with restraint and honesty, letting the words carry their own weight. You can see every emotion flicker across his face in real time: resentment, regret, self-loathing, love. It’s mesmerizing, and it’s painfully human.

This moment alone should put Dylan O’Brien in serious awards contention. The performance isn’t about big acting choices or technical polish, it’s about truth. He captures the raw, contradictory mess of grief: the anger at the person who’s gone, the guilt for surviving them, and the desperate need to still feel connected to them somehow. It’s easily one of the most emotionally honest performances of the year.

Twinless doesn’t hold your hand. It’s uncomfortable, haunting, and ultimately cathartic. By the time Roman and Dennis reunite in the diner scene, sharing a small, almost tender callback to a habit Roman once shared with Rocky, the film has earned every ounce of its quiet emotion.

Dylan O’Brien proves here that he’s capable of profound, layered work. Not just the intensity we’ve seen in his earlier roles, but the vulnerability of someone cracked open by grief and still trying to love through the wreckage.

Twinless isn’t a film you watch once and forget. It lingers in your chest, in your throat, and in the way you look at the people you’ve lost.