Amityville The Awakening (2017)

A new family, one headed by a lethargic Jennifer Jason Leigh as mom, moves into the Amityville Horror house and over the course of a perfunctory 87-minutes, the son, brain-dead, bedridden, unresponsive and hooked up to machines in the front room, starts to show signs of improved condition, leading his twin sister Belle to suspect dark forces are at play and luckily her new school friends have seen and read all the books and movies in the series and so can catch her up on the based-on-a-true-family-massacre paranormal story. 

★★☆☆☆

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Three Identical Strangers (2018)

The rise to fame of celebrity triplets, Eddie Gallard, David Kellman and Robert Shafran, a trio who in the 80s appeared on the Phil Donahue show, did cameos in a Madonna movie and opened a SOHO restaurant, is a remarkable story in and of itself, worthy of a documentary, but this documentary weaves a sinister story behind the story of their trajectory to fame: a fascinating but not very substantial conspiracy theory centred around a hearsay account of a champagne toast and a box of research papers that remains unsighted and uncited.

★★★☆☆

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Taking Lives (2004)

Featuring Angelina Jolie as pillow-lipped FBI profiler Illeana Lara Croft Clarice Starling Scott, Taking Lives is such a formulaic serial killer thriller a more fitting title would have been Checking Boxes, because it feels like every item on a serial killer thriller checklist has been thrown in: a Tom Ripley chameleon killer, an unnecessary Dead Ringers twins backstory, male cops antagonised by a female agency interloper with unusual methods, a motorway chase, jump scares as bodies spring out of dark recesses, a cool killer who suddenly cracks and goes goo-goo-ga-ga to reveal just how deeply-rooted his mother complex is, bad police work of the enter-the-dark-room-alone variety (and the leave-the-protected-witness-alone-for-a-quick-mo-to-go-have-a-ciggy-by-the-cop-car variety), blurred professional boundaries as Illeana beds (no, desks) a person of interest in the case, and a protracted denouement where the killer's m.o. - painstakingly compiled by the acutely perceptive profiler - is abandoned for an out-of-character stand-off between cop and culprit in which the identity thief and killer of only male victims for over twenty years suddenly becomes an obsessive stalker, domestic abuser and holder-on of Life's details.

★★☆☆☆

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Us (2019)

The fact the aggressors are doppelgangers does not make Jordan Peele's home invasion thriller any more interesting than, say, The Strangers, (another home invasion thriller with a bemusing preface note) and in fact simply ends up quadrupling the number of wearying "must try to reach the scissors" scenes of violence that viewers need to wait through before the thriller's US sociopolitical analogy is elucidated, but by the time that rush of exposition comes, your other self, not the mindless zombie tethered in the dark forced to dumbly contemplate rabbits and impossibly weighted coffee tables but your more intelligent, educated equal, will be other places, in the privileged position of making shopping lists and the like.

★★☆☆☆

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Rabbit (2017)

Thanks to a series of terrifying waking visions, a woman, quite unnecessarily a medical student in Germany, becomes convinced she knows the whereabouts of her missing twin sister and so embarks on a journey into a gothic Australian bush nightmare of catatonic parents and colonial weirdos doing song and dance routines a la Britt Eckland in The Wicker Man, and before you can say, "All these creepy elements aren't going to add up to much," things become really incoherent.

★★☆☆☆

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Double Lover (L'Amant Double) (2017)

Like an add-on chapter to David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, one that no-one wanted or asked for, this François Ozon movie tells of mentally fragile Chloe's therapy sessions (read 'sex sessions') with a pair of pouty Calvin Klein-model psychotherapists - twins - and is a movie that quickly forgets that one of the twins that Chloe marries - the dowdy cardigan-wearing one - is driving her crazy with his secrets - but that must have been just to progress the story because lickety-split and before you can say, "This is not going to end sensibly," he reverts to being a model citizen, no hint of a lie, while she starts a torrid affair with the twin brother - the wild one with smart shirts unbuttoned to expose a hard, hairless chest - and from that point, things start to make less and less sense with the movie's raison d'etre simply being repetitive sex scenes including a centrepiece involving both brothers.

★★☆☆☆

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Alone With A Stranger (2000)

There actually is fun to be had with this so-bad-it's-worth-watching-but-only-if-you-are-up-late-unable-to-sleep-on-a-weekend movie about a man who so badly wants everything his twin brother has, he sets out to get it at any diabolical cost and no matter how much bad acting is required.

★☆☆☆☆

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Adaptation (2002)

Adapting US journalist Susan Orlean's novel The Orchid Thief for the big screen causes screenplay writer Charlie Kaufman an existential crisis because it is a largely narrative-free contemplation on flowers and disappointment, but by inserting himself into the story and finding parallels between his own midlife crisis and the article's eponymous hero Laroche's obsessive work hunting the elusive ghost orchid, Kaufman succeeds in creating a thought-provoking and often funny, self-referential drama that won Meryl Streep an Oscar for her performance as Orlean.

★★★★☆

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Dead Ringers (1988)

The identical twin brothers in David Cronenberg's psychological thriller, both played by Jeremy Irons, are indistinguishable to the women they share and pretty much indistinguishable to viewers who will find it not worth trying to keep track of whether it is Beverly Mantel who is the sophisticat and Elliot Mantel who is the snivelling one, or vice versa, and which one is using drugs and going mad and which one isn't, but that seems to be the point - the two big questions here are, "Where does one twin start and the other twin end?" and, "How long will it be before this movie ends and another more enjoyable, less twisted one starts?"

★★☆☆☆

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Jack and Jill (2011)

As the credits roll, voxpops are shown of actual twins discussing twindom as though the preceding movie, which has Adam Sandler playing fraternal twins Jack and Jill, was a celebration of twin-love and not an unfunny embarrassment for everyone involved (but especially mortifying for Katie Holmes as Jack's wife and Al Pacino in a career-low, appearing as himself.)

☆☆☆☆☆

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I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

A serial killer's victim is found minus a foot and hand but still alive, however when she wakes up in hospital she claims to be someone else entirely, not the victim, in this truly lamentable psychological thriller featuring what would have to be one of the most imbecilic plots and laughable denouements ever committed to celluloid.

☆☆☆☆☆

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22 Jump Street (2014)

The undercover cops again head to college to investigate a drug ring and achieve that rare thing, a sequel funnier than - in fact, all-round better than - the original, particularly with its self-referential humour and the hilarious way it embroils its heroes despite themselves - clearly adults and clearly not brothers - in the popularity contests, cliques and dramas of high school.

★★★★☆

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The Woman Who Wasn't There (2012)

The Woman Who Wasn't There is about a woman who survived but whose fiance Dave died in the September 11 attacks on New York's Twin Towers, except that she was later discovered to be an extreme example of those peculiar "Catfish" liars, then the documentary abruptly ends.

★★★☆☆

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Incendies (2010)

The story is the stuff of Greek tragedy played out in a modern war-torn country, about twins following posthumous orders from their mother, and the viewer will wonder what on earth possessed director Denis Villeneuve to tell such a gruelling, exhausting but undeniably rivetting saga.

★★★☆☆

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