Documentary · 2017
The Twinning Reaction
Lori Shinseki’s feature documentary, released in 2017, is the first film to take the Neubauer twin study as its central subject. It is built around twins reunited as adults — including Doug Rausch and Howard Burack — and was, in the year before Three Identical Strangers, the most sustained public account of the study available in any medium other than print.
At a Glance
- Director
- Lori Shinseki
- Year
- 2017
- Subjects
- Several pairs of twins reunited as adults, including Doug Rausch and Howard Burack
- Festival circuit
- Documentary festivals beginning in 2017
- Distribution
- Limited theatrical and television; subsequent streaming availability
What the film does
Shinseki’s film is quieter and less commercially packaged than the documentary that followed it the next year. It does not have the structural surprise of Three Identical Strangers, which begins with the triplets’ reunion as wonder and lets the audience discover what was beneath it. The Twinning Reaction begins, more directly, with adults who already know they are subjects and proceeds as a series of careful, extended conversations about what they have learned, what they have not, and what the institutions involved have or have not been willing to tell them. The film is closer in temperament to a long magazine piece than to a theatrical documentary, and it benefits from that pace.
Doug Rausch and Howard Burack are central to the film. Other twin pairs and individual subjects also appear. The film places the subjects’ testimony in the context of the broader institutional history — the role of Louise Wise Services, the Child Development Center’s research program, the deposit of records at Yale — without overwhelming the human material with archival exposition.
Why it matters
The film’s historical importance is partly a matter of priority. It was first. The questions Three Identical Strangers would put in front of millions of viewers a year later were already being asked, on the record and on camera, by Shinseki and her subjects in 2017. Shinseki’s film also includes subjects who did not appear in the later documentary; the body of public testimony from the study’s subjects is meaningfully larger because of her work than it would otherwise be.
The film’s relative obscurity compared to the 2018 release is largely a function of distribution rather than substance. Three Identical Strangers was acquired at Sundance by a major theatrical distributor; The Twinning Reaction moved through smaller channels. Both films are valuable; readers approaching the topic for the first time are well served by watching them in chronological order.
Where to watch
The film has been available through several streaming and rental services since its release. Public libraries in the United States may carry it through their digital lending collections. As with Three Identical Strangers, this archive points readers to legitimate distribution rather than to specific aggregator URLs that change over time.
Related: Doug Rausch & Howard Burack · Three Identical Strangers