The Palace review – this burlesque thriller about secret twins could really do with Lindsay Lohan

11/04/2024 07:55 PM

It's got so much potential – identical twins split up as babies before the fall of the Berlin Wall – and yet this German drama is hokey and lame. In fact, Lohan managed a better dual performance in The Parent Trap … aged 12

Despite the fun-filled antics of The Parent Trap, Big Business and various Olsen twin films, running into your doppelganger is an existentially horrifying prospect. In Mirror Image, one of the finest episodes of The Twilight Zone, the bone-chilling terror of such an encounter is uncovered over 25 taut minutes, with a woman in 1960s New York coming across her double, who grins at her sinisterly in a train station. It slowly dawns on the protagonist that a doppelganger's presence indicates that your demise is imminent and that they are set to replace you.

In Walter Presents: The Palace, the latest from Channel 4's Walter Iuzzolino-curated streaming service, a doppelganger's presence has no such sinister meaning, nor is it the setup for farcical high jinks. Instead, it takes a great premise and settles on a half-baked melodrama.