The Skeleton Twins opens with a suicide attempt by Milo (Bill Hader), who is saved because he left his stereo blasting Blondie so loudly that his neighbors complained. His sister Maggie (Kristin Wiig), who hasn’t heard from Milo in ten years, receives a call from the hospital while sitting by a warm bath, holding a handful of prescription pills and contemplating her own attempt, which she doesn’t follow through on and tells no one about. The contrast is telling; the siblings are perhaps equally damaged, but Milo’s cries for help are loud and public, while Maggie’s are so muted and submerged that no one even sees them.
After being released from the hospital, Milo leaves L.A., where he’s been failing to land acting gigs, and goes to live with Maggie and her husband in the upstate New York town they grew up in. Despite a decade long absence from each other’s lives, Milo and Maggie see each other more clearly than anyone else. In fact this clear perception is exactly why there’s been no contact; they’re both hiding from the fact that their lives are nothing like they imagined. Maggie works part-time as a dental hygenist and is married to Lance (Luke Wilson), a guy’s guy who’s living and supportive, but also so simple and untroubled that it drives Maggie a little crazy. Her frustrations simmer beneath the surface, sublimating themselves into a secret life with ill-advised affairs.
Maggie and Milo’s reunion naturally encourages them to look back to their childhood and its defining tragedy, the suicide of their father. In one stroke, they both lost their most supportive parent and gained a dark cloud that continues to hang over them. Two recurring flashbacks to this time show both the last time they were innocent and the isolating aftereffect of that trauma. Above all, they remember their father urging them to stick together – that life is hard and they’re stronger together.
The Skeleton Twins is not as dark as I’ve made it sound so far – these are legitimately wounded and unhappy characters, but Hader and Wiig can’t help being funny, even while they deftly handle the heavier material. The two have an authentic and exciting chemistry as siblings; they’re both cynical outsiders, but with different styles – gay Milo is expressive and loud, while the more superficially normal Maggie is introverted and sardonic. Their camaraderie and silly humor is hilarious throughout and shows what they’ve been missing while out of each other’s lives. Particularly winning are an emotional lip sync to Starship and a laughing gas-aided conversation full of fart noises in Maggie’s dental office.
Sophomore director Craig Johnson manages an impressive mixture of tones and The Skeleton Twins could be a dramatic breakout for Hader and Wiig, the two best SNL alumni of the past decade. Maggie and Milo are complex, haunted, funny, childish, and searching, but in different, yet complementary ways – in short, they’re siblings. Living together as adults may be sometimes disastrous, but their lives ultimately become richer and healthier for being together.
