I really enjoyed this film, although afterwards I felt guilty about it. How can someone so toxic be so adorable?

Written and directed by James Sweeney, he plays Dennis, a young man who we meet at a support group for twins who have lost their other twin. He makes a connection with Roman (Dylan O’Brien), a twin who is devastated by the loss of his more extroverted other half Rocky.

The first act is about the tentative friendship that is created between them, about the meeting of grief and what we can do for each other by just showing up and listening. By being the person on the end of the phone call at 11 o’clock at night when you just want to go grocery shopping but haven’t been able to leave your house.

It’s hard to talk about the second and third acts of this film without giving away spoilers so if you haven’t seen this film, please don’t read any further.

When we discover that there is more to Dennis‘s story then we are first told, it is quite satisfying as it provides a conflict that we know will provide spice to the story. It recasts Dennis in a different light and this is where the guilt emerges, because he is flawed and toxic and the kind of person you should run away from from but he is also quite adorable. We shouldn’t like him but it is hard not to.

He is tenaciously bitchy to his coworker Marcie (Aisling Franciosi who is almost unrecognisable as the protagonist in The Nightingale) but he has that cynical snarkiness that proliferates in social media.

And maybe this is what is interesting about this film as it makes us see through the eyes of the kind of person we would normally see as a monster. I don’t mind that we are sitting in their shoes for awhile, seeing what might lie behind the ex who won’t leave you alone or the work mate who knows a bit too much about your personal life.

I wish we had been given a bit more depth of character to both Dennis and Roman. Dylan O’Brien does a pretty great job at portraying two very different characters, although his portrayal of Rocky is done with fairly broad strokes.

There are moments of warm humour and overall this quite an enjoyable film despite its dark themes. I also couldn’t help pondering, if we ignore the morality and Roman’s hurt at being lied to, was he better off for having Dennis in his life? Do we hobble ourselves by our expectation of others and moral outrage? Maybe not. Setting boundaries is sometimes all that protects us.