Twisted Twin (2020)

In addition to being a crackling good yarn, “Twisted Twin” delivers a provocative message about the time-honored question of nature versus nurture. A pair of twins was adopted by different parents. One child developed into an angel due to the genuine love and affection she received. The other family was mean-spirited and did not genuinely love their daughter. This is the story of Tessa Ann “Tess” Houston (the angel) and Samantha “Sammy” Crain (the monster).

Mitch and Karen Crain were awful parents, apparently adopting little Sammy to keep up the facade of a perfect family. When Sammy reached her majority, the parents disinherited her, and she had them murdered in response. But the diabolical Sammy also hatched a plan to set up her twin sister Tess as the murderer. It was a devious scheme that she nearly pulled off.

One of the key players in the film is Tess’s mom Patricia. Because the two characters had such a deep bond and because Patricia had showered love on her daughter, it was never completely plausible that she would not have recognized Sammy as a fraud much earlier in the film. Patricia and Tess were so close that they would both break out in a duet when “their song” was playing on the radio. When the imposter Sammy refused to sing along, Patricia should have stopped the car right there to confront her.

The actress playing the dual roles of Tess and Sammy was terrific. She created two distinct characters and discovered depth in each of them. There was excellent “trick photography” in the scenes where the twins appear together, especially in the wrestling match on the floor of Grammy Parker’s cabin. The tight screenplay kept the action moving at a brisk pace, and the denouement with Sammy in an orange jumpsuit was surprising in the genuine feelings shared by the twin sisters when Tess visited Sammy in the correctional facility.

Mark Twain wrote an unforgettable novel called “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” which traces the same theme as this film with an even more profound sense of social consciousness of the nature versus nurture theme. A child’s development is dependent on the same care that Tess provided to her beautiful horse Pepper: unconditional love.