It’s a no-brainer that growing up with an identical twin can’t be a fun experience for both of them. Jeff Fisher’s The Image of You only proves my point further. Monochorionic and monoamniotic twins Anna and Zoe were as close as they possibly could’ve been in their mother’s womb. I mean, this much close contact is only okay while they were inside the womb, but Alexis decided to raise her daughters in such a way that they became inseparable. In a way, she was relieved that her kids wouldn’t need her as much as other kids do since the sisters would always have each other. This nutty thought process eventually doesn’t end well, and that’s what we’re going to be discussing now.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the movie?
Anna and Zoe are 31 years old, and they still live together in a gorgeous penthouse. Anna is the sweet, gentle, and kind shallow woman who sees hope in things like a good little romantic, while her sister is the complete opposite of her. Zoe is outspoken, bold, and the dominating sister. When Anna meets a rich and handsome investment banker, Nick, through a dating app, she is head over heels in love. Despite Nick using his middle name in his dating profile, Anna sees a catch in him and asks him to be completely honest with her if they were to date. Zoe is suspicious about Nick, and she starts to look into his life in order to find out if he’s hiding any secrets. The movie revolves around the twin sisters and Nick’s tense dynamics leading up to a catastrophe.
What happens when Nick and Anna want to get married?
After a few weeks of dating, Nick’s mother is diagnosed with cancer and barely has a few months left to live. After checking on her, Nick proposes to Anna outside the hospital, and she says yes. Nick’s sister Rebecca bears witness to the proposal, and her reaction is anything but happy. When Anna tells Zoe about it, Zoe suspects that Nick is hiding something and that his intentions aren’t as pure as they seem. She bombards Anna with questions for which she has no answers. Nick’s mother seems genuinely ecstatic over the news, and she and Anna get along with each other in no time. Rebecca is still salty over all of this happening, and her behavior is just as rude as the expressions on her face. Anna’s parents react how you’d imagine them to react, but her father, David, seems off every time he’s supposed to say something. The actual movie starts now, as Zoe calls Nick to meet her for dinner in secrecy.
What does Zoe do with Nick?
Zoe walks into the bar wearing a red dress and turns everybody’s heads in sheer awe of her. Even Nick is moved by her, and he fails to utter a word until she mocks him into talking. Zoe interrogates Nick about his dating profiles still being up and asks him all sorts of questions to make him uncomfortable. They go to dinner after that, and Zoe teases him with flirtatious touching here and there. She conveniently tells him the hotel room number she’s staying at, and she leaves him. Nick tries to not give in for a bit, but his carnal urges get the better of him. He enters the room to see that Zoe has been waiting for him, and an intense makeout leads to them sleeping together while Anna thinks he’s having a boy’s night.
Can Nick keep his affair a secret?
Nick refuses to meet with Anna the next morning and makes up that he’s feeling sick. The hickey on his neck makes it too risky for him to see Anna, and he struggles to stay okay with what he did. That very day, he gives in to Zoe again and calls her himself to continue the affair. Meanwhile, Anna asks Zoe to come with her to pick out her wedding dress, and Zoe disapproves of her choice and asks her to wear a backless dress instead. Anna refuses to agree with her, and she finds her dress cut off from the middle when she returns to collect it a couple of days later. Now Anna wears the dress Zoe wanted her to wear and realizes what happened with her dress. She meets David and tells him that it’s time for her to get out of her sister’s shadow, and she confronts Zoe to her face too when she returns home. Zoe doesn’t care about her approval, as she and Nick are making love to each other in all the inappropriate places, and both of them are addicted to each other.
What happens when Anna finds out about Nick and Zoe?
Zoe and Nick finally have the talk, and Zoe tells him that he’ll eventually have to choose between her and Anna. Nick can’t say it to Anna’s face and nods when Zoe asks if he wants her to break the news. Alexis got to know about the affair somehow, and she tells Rebecca about how it’s not Zoe’s fault for what happened between her brother and Zoe. Rebecca leaves and goes to visit Anna. She tells her everything, and soon Nick receives a call from Anna saying she never wants to see him again. Nick breaks down, realizes his mistake, and rushes down to Anna’s apartment. Nick’s world comes crashing down when he finds Anna lying on the floor, dead, with a knife stuck in her stomach. He cries for help, and someone knocks him out with a baseball bat.
Who killed Anna?
Nick opens his eyes hours later and finds Zoe sitting with the knife while she’s wrapped Anna’s corpse in the carpet. Nick threatens to go to the police, but Zoe explains her elaborate plan, to prove how Nick would only be hurting himself. Zoe used Anna’s fingernails to scratch Nick with them so that pieces of his DNA would be found under Anna’s nails. She has also put his fingerprints on the murder weapon and covered the sleeves of his jacket with Anna’s blood. Nick realizes Zoe has closed all the doors for him, and Zoe says she did all of this so that they could be together. She gave her sister up for them, and now Nick must do the clean-up. Zoe instructs Nick on how to get rid of the body and tells him to use the incinerator. In a building nearby Anna’s apartment, there’s an incinerator that’s open, and there’s no CCTV in the area. Nick puts the body inside the burner and puts his jacket on it before turning the switch on. Nick comes back to the apartment and throws up before passing out in the bathroom.
What happened to Zoe?
Nick wakes up on the couch and finds Zoe cooking breakfast and calling him sweetie. He sees heart-shaped pancakes on the table, just like Anna made him when they started dating. He looks up to see that it’s Anna, and she’s asking him about the wedding plans. Nick is stupefied, and he can’t tell if Zoe is messing with him or if it’s actually Anna. Nick drives off and goes to visit David, and David finds his soon-to-be son-in-law breaking down on his driveway. He takes Nick in and calms him down a bit. Nick confesses that he killed one of his daughters, but he can’t tell who it is. He admits to having an affair with Zoe, and that’s when David stops him to tell him a secret that haunts their family. David tells him that Zoe has been dead for three years now and shows him a picture. The picture resembles the exact scene Nick witnessed when he saw Anna’s dead body. Nick starts to lose his mind from all this horror, but David tells him that Zoe stabbed herself and died in a dramatic manner. Anna walked in on her dead body, and she’s been traumatized still. Alexis thinks it’s okay for Anna to play at being Zoe, but David never loving Zoe was not out of favoritism. David never loved Zoe because she didn’t exist; it’s Anna who turns into Zoe whenever she pleases to. What Nick thinks to be schizophrenia, David believes she is just grieving. Nick thinks of the body he burned and can’t figure out who it was. David thinks Anna played a trick on him, but Nick knows it’s a human hand he held when the body was covered in carpet. David mentions Rebecca knowing about the affair, and Nick checks his phone to see texts from his mom—Rebecca is missing. Nick sees all of it clearly now; he accidentally cremated his own sister’s body.
Why did Zoe kill herself?
Anna comes into David’s office, and Nick runs after her, just realizing that she killed Rebecca and made him burn her body. Anna plays innocent, hides behind her mother, and blames Nick for murdering her over inheritance. Anna suddenly turns into Zoe, and when Nick confronts Alexis about it, Alexis shouts back at him, coddling Anna’s impersonation of her dead sister. David shows up to fix the situation, but Anna accuses him of adultery. She knows that Zoe caught David with one of his mistresses when she was a child, and that damaged her for life. David embraces her and tries to convince her that things will be fine, but Anna stabs him and shoves the knife through his stomach. When Nick goes to check on David, Alexis knocks him out with a blow to the head. Nick finds himself in front of multiple police vehicles, getting arrested for murdering Rebecca and David. Anna and her mother have made him realize that infidelity has its consequences.
After Nick is gone and David is dead, Anna rests peacefully in her mother’s arms. She tells Alexis that she thinks Alexis will never forgive her. Alexis is puzzled, and Anna tells her Zoe killed herself because she slept with Scott, the only man Zoe truly loved. Anna’s first husband apparently cheated on her with Zoe, but it turns out that might be a false accusation after all, and it’s Anna who truly ended her sister’s life. I’d just say to love your siblings a little less and don’t sleep with their partners.
