Watch The First Trailer For THE SKELETON TWINS – Stars Kristen Wiig And Bill Hader

Poet Maya Angelou writes “I don’t believe accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”

As children, Maggie and Milo Dean seemed inseparable. But tragedy hit their family as teenagers when their father died, sending them on different paths, and ultimately leading to a decade-long estrangement. Now in their thirties, another set of near-tragedies brings them together. Melancholic Milo (Bill Hader), a frustrated actor with no prospects, decides to accept his sister’s offer to return to their hometown in bucolic upstate New York. However, he’s unaware that Maggie (Kristen Wiig) herself is barely holding it together, secretly unhappy despite her loving husband Lance (Luke Wilson).

Having had it’s premiere in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, here’s your first look at director Craig Johnson’s THE SKELETON TWINS.

At first, the bond between the twins is tentative: A surprise visit from their mother (Joanna Gleason), a new-age practitioner who refuses to recognize her children’s pain, only seems to amplify just how little Maggie and Milo have recovered from the events of their childhood. Secretly Maggie and Milo separately seek out relationships that are destined to go nowhere. Maggie enjoys the flirtatious attention of her hunky Australian SCUBA instructor (Boyd Holbrook) a little too much, sabotaging her interest in having a baby with Lance.

Meanwhile, Milo meets up with his first love, Rich (Ty Burrell). After their father’s death, Milo (as an older teenager) had an affair with Rich, his high-school English teacher – a scandal that drove brother and sister apart. At first, Rich is seemingly happy with a girlfriend and grown son and resents Milo’s sudden return. Desperate to get his former lover’s attention, Milo pretends to be successful and happy, which is enough to get Rich to consider rekindling their romance.

With painful wounds that only the other can understand, Milo and Maggie grow closer as they try to guide each other through this newest set of secrets. But as the hurt from the past catches up to the confusion in the present, their special bond is put to the test once again. They bring out not only the best in each other, but also the worst, and they are each desperate to avoid owning their own mistakes.

Eventually Milo and Maggie grow to understand that living truthfully and sharing their lives with each other, pain and all, is the only way they can move forward and reclaim the happiness they once enjoyed together.

Director’s Statement

The Skeleton Twins is about a brother and sister and their strange, messy, beautiful, funny, volatile relationship. At its core, it’s a love story: Maggie and Milo meet essentially as strangers and then discover, or, in this case, re-discover their love for each other. But what interested me most about this story were the small ways in which brothers and sisters interact, reflect each other and connect – specifically through humor.

I am very close to my sister and, even though we are wildly different people, we share an offbeat sense of humor. My sister can make me laugh in almost any situation, light or dark, and I wanted that sensibility to infuse Maggie and Milo’s relationship. More than their common history, more than the mutual feeling that they’ve screwed up their lives, more than their shared taste in 80s music, it is their ability to crack each other up, often in the face of tragic circumstances, that bonds them together.

This bittersweet dynamic is key to the tone of the film. I wanted the The Skeleton Twins to feel like real life in all its messiness and unpredictability. That means it needed to be both funny and sad, often within the same scene. These kinds of contradictions help to humanize the characters and create a film world that is recognizable – perhaps painfully so.

Maggie and Milo are damaged, prickly, sardonic, and self-obsessed. But they are also passionate, generous, hopeful, and full of love. And, most of all, they’re funny. The moment we are about to judge them, they come through with acts of grace and humor that disarm us – and remind us not only of our own brothers and sisters, but of ourselves. We’re all struggling against life in our own ways, and if you can’t face the darkness and chuckle, you’re done for.

Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, THE SKELETON TWINS hits theaters on September 19.

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Photos – Courtesy of Roadside Attractions