Seconds Apart (2011) Antonio Negret

Freaky people, twins. In a trick of a haircut my ma and her sis can look uncannily similar, and lets not even get into the infamous round of Pictionary some decades back when one correctly guessed the other's elephant from the briefest momentary formless scrawl. Freaky people indeed. Seconds Apart comes from the freaky school of twin movies, though quality wise is more Blood Link than Dead Ringers. Counter-intuitively, though perhaps audaciously it doesn't bother with much in the way of human duality or shifting of personalities, mostly sticking with telepathy. Seth and Jonah (or is it Jonah and Seth?) get off on fear, creating, manipulating and recording fear in a deadly narcotic exchange, doggedly pursuing that first perfect high that slinks away unceasingly into the past. A nice idea executed with a pleasing cruelty and flair for the twisted, but the film isn't really that special. 

The main trouble is that Jonah and Seth just aren't really interesting at all. They look creepy enough but never come across across as more than dicks, just utterly average *beep* kids who fail to communicate anything through their average ass-holeness. A film like this really needs the fuel of torment or sadism, some real disturbance behind things, but it isn't here. There's not much here in general in fact. The victims of the film receive only the most cursory of character sketches and so depart with little power, the embittered detective on the case has only a little further shading and likewise only a little more impact. A romantic interest that pops up to rack up some tension is underwritten and unconvincing, though not really the actresses fault, who looks nice and gives it the old college try. And while there are a few scenes of bloodshed there's almost none of the sort of nasty gore that could have made several of them pretty great. Still Orlando Jones impresses as tough, determined Detective Lampkin, showing none of his better seen roots in lighter fare. And between the effortless experience of watching this and its scattered glimmering of legit inspiration it sits just on the right side of average, making it one of the better releases in the After Dark Original line and a reasonably cromulent slow evening watch in general. Not one to strain to watch of course, but not one to flee from either, minor thumbs up all in all. Elephant.