‘Tin And Tina’ Theories: Were The Twins Really Innocent Or Pure Evil?

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Tin and Tina is a film about two adopted children who become their mother’s worst nightmare. While the film is terrifying in its own right, we were more captivated by how, in such stories, it is always the mother who is the first victim or the first to notice strange behavior in the kids. It makes sense, of course, since it can be argued that mothers are closest to the children and do most of the caretaking; therefore, they would be the first to notice any difference. However, this film also brings to light that, despite this, their concerns are often ignored. Women have always been considered the “emotional” gender, and men have had a way of ignoring them on the basis of some explanation or another. We see that happening with Lola in Tin and Tina as well. It was astounding how much her husband disbelieved her and kept writing off her concerns. However, for the sake of the story, there are two perspectives to consider here. One, that Adolfo was right, and Lola was indeed delusional about the children. The second scenario would be that he was being a typical man who did not believe his wife and deserved the divorce that Lola was considering.

Spoilers Alert


Could Tin And Tina Be Innocent?

Lola is in the hospital a lot during Tin and Tina. Be it her medical emergency at the beginning or during New Year’s, then for her delivery, and finally, after Adolfo’s death, the hospital is there during a lot of crucial points of the story. We also see that she grows thinner and paler as the film progresses. This could either be interpreted as the effect of the demonic children on her or as her own weakening mind and body due to her fears.

Lola had gotten married to Adolfo because she was pregnant. We will never know whether she truly loved her husband, but when her miscarriage happened, it changed her entire life. It is important to note that the miscarriage happened in a church moments after Adolfo became her husband. The impact of the loss must have turned her sense of reasoning fragile, and we wouldn’t be surprised if, subconsciously, she started questioning whether it was the church or Adolfo becoming her husband that was responsible for the tragedy. Lola had never accepted her miscarriage and was still struggling to make sense of it, which is why she demanded to know from the Reverend Mother why “God let innocent, unborn children die”? Lola wanted an explanation, one that would make her grief go away, but that was not to be found. So, Lola turned her anger towards God and her husband.

We believe that Lola brought Tin and Tina home because they were twins, the exact thing that Lola had lost. However, when she saw how attached they were to God, that did not sit well with Lola because, according to her, God was the enemy. When their bully fell off the cliff, the audience was made to think if it was the kids’ magic or their curse that had done it. But it is a possibility that the boy had genuinely fallen off. There is also a more sinister scenario in our minds. What if it was Lola herself who had pushed him? We are considering that she may be suffering from a split personality disorder, and the other person residing in her was acting out what she perceived to be the unreasonableness of God. True believers might say that God loves everyone and is always benevolent. But people like Lola, who are dealing with so much grief, might say that God is a petty child who gets offended easily, and that is why he causes the boy to fall because he had said that the twins should be blessed by the Holy Ghost. Then there was the case of Lola losing her hair right after she took away the kids’ Bible. It might have truly been a hormonal issue, but the kids’ belief in God handing out reward and punishment had etched itself in Lola’s mind, and she believed it was their demonic powers that had caused it to happen. Of course, the most terrifying incidents of all started later. Lola was tied up to the bed, and Tin tried to stab her with an injection as a way of feeding the child inside. As scary as the scene was, something that was so off about it was that Lola came down the stairs limping and was around the house without falling down once in that heavily pregnant state. Did the kids really steal her leg and tie her up, or was it another one of her delusions before she herself took that leg off?

Then came the final straw: the kids trying to baptize the baby by almost trying to drown him. Lola was against baptism, to begin with, since she saw it as another way of God interfering with her life. However, something that felt off to us about the scene was Adolfo’s perspective. The moment he looked back to see what was going on also felt like it was the first time the audience had an accurate idea of the situation. We wonder whether it was Lola herself who, in her dissociative identity, had tried to harm her baby. The kids had been obedient so far about keeping away from talk of religion on Lola’s order. Why would they suddenly change unless they didn’t, and it was Lola’s doing all along?

Finally, there is the case of Adolfo. We genuinely believe that he was struck by lightning since that was also the official diagnosis. It is possible that Lola might have set him on fire herself, but we don’t find that to align with everything else. However, we believe that she wanted to separate from him. So far, as a father, he had just been a money-making person. He had not been there for Lola when she needed him after the miscarriage. He had said that he would do anything she wanted, and in the very next breath, he refused to leave the house when she asked for it. It did not escape our notice that the house burned down along with Adolfo. But coming back to him, he had not understood even once why Lola could not accept Tin and Tina as her own. Finally, when it came to their own baby, Adolfo could not be bothered to dispel some fatherly affection by picking him up.

Also, notice how he was not ready to discuss Lola’s concerns about the children and just brushed them under the carpet? He was not a good partner, and Lola was better off without him. We doubt she killed him, but maybe she manifested it strongly enough. We wondered why Lola would adopt the children back. Our theory would be that Lola knew that the children thought in terms of reward and punishment. Therefore, if Adolfo had been killed by them or by God, it was punishment for something. Maybe it was the result of sending them back to the orphanage, or maybe God was protecting her from a bad partner. In either scenario, she needed to bring the children back for a safer life for herself and the baby. In the final minutes of the film, we felt like it was the baby who was being buried in the ground. The Reverend Mother had said that the baby was safe, and there was also a stroller near Lola at the scene. Yet, the words of the people burying the casket make us think that they were placing a baby on the earth. Only Lola could have killed him, either in one of her fits or as the last warning from her other personality to bring back the children. She had taken Tin and Tina’s parents from them when she left them at the convent. As punishment, her child was taken away from her. We don’t know how prevalent therapy was in 1980s Spain, but unless Lola gets it, even Tin and Tina will be in danger.


Are Tin And Tina Really The Devil?

The oddest thing we felt about Tina and Tina while watching the film was that these kids had genuine intentions but were dangerously stupid. A better term might be “brainwashed,” but we are leaning toward the former. Reverend Mother had a very black-and-white view of the world based on the teachings of the Bible, and that is what the kids learned the entire time. Unlike other children, they were not adopted as babies but had spent some time learning the ways of the church. That is why they dealt with their bully the way a nun would, by saying that they would pray for him. The thing is, despite everything we said above, the only thing that can make us believe that Tin and Tina were indeed dangerous was what they did to the dog. These two had no real-world concept of life and death but thought in terms of heaven, hell, and salvation. It is not that they used the Bible to navigate the real world, but they thought that the Bible was the only world there was. That makes it believable that they would tie up Lola to the bed and try to inject her stomach with something. Later, it is entirely probable that, in their dangerous naivete, they tried to drown the baby.

Whether Tin and Tina did these things or not, they were dangerous simply because of their lack of real-world common sense. Right before Lola takes off her ring, she sees that the door to their house is open, though Adolfo is sure that he has closed it. Repairing the TV was a thing Adolfo used to do with the children, and he was also the one who actually set their Bible on fire. The Reverend Mother had said that the stormy night was a time for justice. Adolfo had set their Bible on fire—the thing that was most precious to them. In the night, Adolfo catches fire, and his whole house burns down—the thing he valued the most. This very scary coincidence, along with what happened to the dog, convinces us that the kids must indeed be something evil.

Overall, Tin and Tina is a genuinely scary watch, but most of it is because you never understand who to be scared of, the fanatic children or their God-hating mother? We would rather leave it at the question because the prospect of the answer scares us.


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Divya Malladi
Divya Malladi
Divya spends way more time on Netflix and regrets most of what she watches. Hence she has too many opinions that she tries to put to productive spin through her writings. Her New Year resolution is to know that her opinions are validated.

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