Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Two’ on Netflix, Where A Pair Of Strangers Are Stuck In A Suspenseful Stitch-uation

Spanish thriller Two (Netflix), from director Mar Targarona (The Photographer of Mauthausen, Boy Missing) pits two strangers together in trying to discover who stitched them together at the abdomen, and why. How’s that for a novel premise?

TWO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A couple is at rest, their faces a hair’s breadth apart. But as they awaken, therein lies the problem. They are strangers to one another, and just now realizing the even bigger issue, which is the bundled mass of skin and fresh stitches that have joined them together at the belly. At first, she panics, tries to cover herself, and accuses her bizarre kind of partner of doing this to her. He’s more measured, though, and looks at their surroundings. The bed, the dresser, the steel door, the blocked windows. Still, she says, “Until proven otherwise, you’re my prime suspect.” And they wince and groan as they educate themselves, fumbling to move in unison. Who did this to them? And why? “Think,” he says. “Are we connected in any way?” Which is grimly hilarious, because they’re suddenly connected in every way.

As the two make their way to the adjacent bathroom, there are official introductions as their business gets done. Sara (Marina Gatell) remembers leaving her home to meet her controlling, jealous husband Mario, and nothing more. David (Pablo Derqui), a male escort, can’t remember much, either. There are clues, though, however elusive. A pair of earrings that aren’t Sara’s. Two bibles, one with a Polaroid of a woman neither of them recognize. Two identical paintings, with hidden cameras behind. And two pills in cups. Sara reaches for one; her head aches from what must have been a heavy dose of sedative. David tells her not to take it. “Whatever. It can’t get any worse.” Down the hatch.

With all of the repeating dualities of their predicament, Sara begins to suspect her husband Mario, an academic whose research focuses on the number two. And David starts to remember a man who offered him money to sleep with his wife, a man whose features Sara says match her husband’s. But as they cycle through a spectrum of emotions, processing fear, desperation, anger, and bitter regret about the mistakes in their own lives, Sara and David realize their only way out the room is to work together and lure inside whoever it is who’s got them in stitches.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? There’s Stuck on You, of course, the 2003 Farrelly brothers comedy with Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins. (Two is much more a suspense film, but it’s sneaky funny, too.) Two shares its notes of claustrophobia, confusion, and strange sense of bonding with the 2016 psychological thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Performance Worth Watching: Marina Gatell, who also co-stars in the Netflix period drama The Cook of Castamar, plays Sara as a woman quick to temper but also observant, proud, and cynical. And considering she’s doing all of this with mostly her eyes, it’s a remarkable performance that makes the setting of Two feel much more expansive than it is.

Memorable Dialogue: “I think we’re stuck together.” “They’ve stitched us, flesh to flesh.” Two gets a lot out of the simple, effectively awful immediacy of Sara and David attempting to cope with what’s happened to them.

Sex and Skin: Sara and David are nude throughout Two.

Our Take: From the get-go, Two builds a calamitous sense of suspense from its startling premise. Sara and David have their faculties about them, but the shock and confusion over their stitchy situation combines with the lingering effects of sedation to further distort the margins of an already answer-less room. The camera informs this effect, too, either peeking at these people from behind a piece of furniture or assuming the voyeuristic perspective of a hidden camera. Remarkably, this is more than enough to fill Two with atmosphere, and the fact of its physically limited setting doesn’t leaden the film’s pace or leave you looking for more characters and action. Marina Gatell and Pablo Derqui build Sara and David’s respective dossiers from short comments and veiled references; as they piece together their new reality, they each conserve pieces of themselves, like any strangers might. Pair that with the weird inverse of intimacy Two presents them with, how so much of their movements mirror the embracing, caressing, and tactile physical satisfaction of a couple in love, and the film finds numerous ways of keeping the viewer’s expectations and assumptions off balance.

The suspense that drives Two isn’t its only gear, either. There is more than a little horror here, too, of its characters recoiling at the human body as a kind of prison, or the twisted, stretchy, and pierced appearance of the wound site that joins them. James Wan’s recent horror hit Malignant explored a similar strain of body horror, and the scarification of twinning.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Two takes its twisted, stitchy premise to sickeningly suspenseful places, and throws in welcome notes of horror and humor, too.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch Two on Netflix