Twins in Horror Twins in Horror
“It's double the giggles and double the grins, and double the trouble if you're blessed with twins.”
I, like many millennials, loved the 1998 romantic comedy, The Parent Trap.
At sleepaway camp, two red-haired 11-year-olds collide and discover they’re twin sisters, each living with a divorced parent. They switch places to meet their other parent and hatch a plan to get Mom & Dad back together, a gambit further complicated by an evil stepmother-to-be.
It’s a deeply charming movie from romcom-master Nancy Myers, with fun pranks and hijinks balanced with deeply heartfelt moments.
I don’t remember when I first heard the news or who told me or how, but my world was ripped apart when I learned that Annie and Hallie were not played by a set of twins, but by one actress.
As a keychain-carrying member of the Mary-Kate and Ashley fan club, the thought of a doubled actress playing twins had never occurred to me, and all those years of watching one person and not two, as I’d imagined, compounded in utter horror. I’d been spellbound by an illusion I didn’t even know was possible; it was uncanny.
The Unheimlech
Also known as the “uncanny,” it’s an unsettling feeling paired with the familiar. Seeing a monster in the woods = horror. Seeing a monster in the woods with your Mom’s face = uncanny horror.
The Uncanny Valley is the disturbing category of almost-humans, i.e. corpses, zombies, ghosts, dolls, and even doppelgangers and twins.
The singular actress embodying a double haunted me.
And then I grew up to meet many twins; twins with identical faces and mannerisms and different personalities, twins who referred to themselves as “we” even if you only asked about one of them, twins who seemed more like siblings, and twins who traveled the country for twin conventions.
In fiction, twins are uncanny because of the push and pull of familiar and unfamiliar, a dynamic that’s best explored in the visual medium of film, sometimes by one actor and sometimes by two.
There are two intentions for twins in film: one that emphasizes their difference and one that emphasizes their sameness. Most play with both.
Spoilers all the way down.
The Twin as Shadow; twins that are differentiated by good and evil
One baby’s born “bad,” the other “normal” or “good.”
In the Treehouse of Horror VII short “The Thing and I” from The Simpsons, the kids discover Bart’s born-evil and detached-at-birth twin with monstrous hair and teeth living in the attic. However, the doctor realizes that the twin with the scar on the wrong side has been living in the attic; it was Bart who was showing signs of evil and should’ve been locked up there eating fishheads for all those years.
In 1972’s Sisters, the twin girls are attached, one “good” and one “wrong." When they’re separated, the “evil” twin dies on the operating table, and the healthy twin absorbs her deceased sister’s personality. She asserts that her struggling twin is still alive, but without pills she morphs into her, wild and stabby.
Same Twins; twins that seek higher connection
The height of intimacy is joining two bodies as one. From a sexual standpoint, that can manifest as sexual intercourse, but from a familial standpoint, in horror movies that manifests as mutation (both in Society).
Conjoined twins are an immense rarity, but twins in film sometimes ache for that psychic connection made physical.
In American Mary, a set of identical twin sisters approach an underground surgeon who does illegal procedures to help people come into their identities; they ask her to swap their left arms. Their greatest fear is that one of them will die before the other, and in case of this horrific circumstance, they will never be without each other.
In David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, identical twins Beverly and Elliot, both played by Jeremy Irons, share their gynecology patients and lovers, and when one of them acquires a drug addiction, the other can’t help but join in. They were never attached, but they roleplay the detachment of the first Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, in one of their surgical experiments.
Sometimes the good and evil pairs seek connection; at the end of Basket Case 2, ‘good’ twin Duane forcibly sews ‘evil’ growth Belial onto his body, returning them to their earlier state. Hugo Simpson’s goal is to sew him and Bart back together.
If you are born with a mirror image, horror films ask, how can you not question if that split is a binary representation of good and evil? How can you not question that you are not two people, but two halves, meant to be whole again?
And what will you do about it? 🔪
Recommended Watchlist
More twins! More twins!
Basket Case (1989)
Classic ‘good twin’/’evil twin’ dynamic plus a ‘let’s connect’ in the sequel; happens in my favorite setting, gritty New York.
Malignant (2021)
Every day of my life I get up, brush my teeth, and I wonder. Where is Malignant 2: The Malignanting? 2 Malignant 4 U? This movie is stupid as hell, beloved by me, and I would’ve watched a sequel or three.
I Know Who Killed Me (2007)
Lindsay Lohan as “twins,” again! This movie tries and fails to imitate the giallo, with its mystery, long title, and bold color palette. It’s not good, but it has fans, and you could be one of them.
As always, thanks for reading!
xo,
the fake blood seeping your white blouse during the climax of the play, only it didn’t hurt like this at the preview last night, and uh ohhh, that squib is still intact ALLIE LEMBO I DON’T THINK THAT’S A PROP KNIFE DON’T DOUBLE TAP FOR THE LOVE OF-
This is a fun read- great background information!