The Skeleton Twins

Some twins can finish each other's sentences, or guess what number the other is imagining with to-the-decimal-point accuracy. In The Skeleton Twins, Maggie and Milo's sibling ESP manifests in simultaneous suicide attempts. Despite living on different coasts and having had no contact in 10 years, the twins, played by Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, try to take their own lives at practically the same moment: She swallows a handful of pills; he cuts his wrists while blaring Blondie in his L.A. apartment. Neither succeeds—in fact, Maggie's attempt is interrupted by a call from the hospital about Milo—but the incident brings them back under the same roof, in the town in upstate New York where they grew up. That gives them the opportunity  finally to deal with their father's suicide, their absentee mother Maggie's unhappy marriage and chronic cheating, and the inappropriate relationship that drove the wedge between them a decade earlier. If this sounds like typical Sundance-baiting indie stuff, well, it is, from the water metaphors to the sepia flashbacks to the Sonic Youth shirts Milo wears to suggest otherness (he's gay, y'see). But if there's one thing writer-director Craig Johnson gets right, it's the casting. As former Saturday Night Live castmates, Hader and Wiig come with built-in brother-sister chemistry. And while the "comedy," such as it exists, is meted out mostly via desiccated sarcasm, it pokes enough holes in the generally flat, affectless tone that some have taken to calling the film a "dramedy." Tellingly, the only moments that stick are those in which the stars are allowed to loosen up, in particular one scene involving nitrous oxide. Such scenes don't come frequently enough to elevate the film above its clichés and unpleasant demeanor, but one can only imagine how insufferable it would be with anyone else.

Critic's Grade: C

SEE IT: The Skeleton Twins is rated R. It opens Friday at Clackamas and Living Room Theaters.

WWeek 2015