Tin & Tina Plot Summary
Currently streaming on Netflix is Tin & Tina, a chilling new movie about the consequences of religious obsession.
The movie is set in Spain in the 1980s and tells the story of Lola and Adolfo, a young couple who decide to adopt when they are told by a doctor that they can’t have children.
They visit a nearby convent where they have the pick of children to adopt. Initially, their intention is to select a baby but when Lola’s heart goes out to twins Tin and Tina, who she immediately feels sorry for when she hears them say nobody loves them, they decide to take the blonde-haired kids back to their home.
The new parents soon regret their decision. Tin and Tina have a strong belief in God and the Bible but they take this belief to literal extremes.
When Lola and Adolfo struggle to look after the children in their care, they come to a decision about their future.
So, what happens to the twins? And how do they impact the lives of their adoptive parents?
Let’s take a closer look at this chilling new movie.
How do the twins adjust to their new home?
They adjust surprisingly well but the same cannot be said of Lola and Adolfo who are alarmed by the children’s behaviour.
Initially, the children seem harmless enough. Sure, they put up crucifixes around the home and berate their new parents for not saying grace, but considering they have been brought up with nuns and strict Christian teaching, this behaviour can be excused.
They even give their new parents a gift each as a way of saying thank you for adopting them.
Lola is given a crucifix necklace to protect her from evil and Adolfo is given a crown of thorns so he can free the children from the curse of sin! This latter gift symbolises Jesus’s sacrifice when he gave His life on the cross to save mankind from the hellbound consequences of their sins.
Okay, so the gifts are a little bizarre but hey, at least the twins are trying to ingratiate themselves with their new parents, right?
Unfortunately, Tin and Tina’s religious beliefs soon have terrible consequences for their new adoptive mom and dad.
What do Tin and Tina do next?
Lola is invited by the children to play a game which descends into a pillow fight. Harmless, right? Sure, at least until the end of the game when Tin asks Tina to wrap a pillow case around his head to suffocate him. She does this because Tin can apparently communicate with God when he is approaching his last breath. Lola is understandably horrified by what she sees but for some reason, doesn’t give them a lecture on the danger of wrapping things around your head!
Things get worse from then on, not only for the parents but for the family dog.
The dog doesn’t like Tin and Tina and regularly barks at them. When in an agitated mood, it accidentally bites Lola, much to the horror of the children. When their new parents are in bed, they drug the unfortunate hound and then kill it by cutting it open with a knife and pizza cutter.
However, the children feel justified in their actions as they committed this terrible act to clean the dog’s soul – they literally pull something out of the dog, though we don’t see what (unlikely to be its soul but the children don’t realize this) – and they do it because, in their eyes, the dog behaved badly towards their new mom.
After killing the dog, they are surprised when it doesn’t wake up. Lola and Adolofo find out what happened when the twins stand at the foot of their bedstands, in bloodied nightgear, to tell them about what they have just done. Despite the carnage they created, the children don’t realise they killed the dog.
Tin and Tina feel terrible when they realize what they have done so do what they think is right by God. As penance for their sins, they injure themselves by walking around on their knees with forks stuck beneath the bandages that are wrapped around their legs!
Lola and Adolfo are understandably troubled by the twin’s behaviour but they are given respite from their worries when Lola receives some happy news. After feeling faint, she speaks to a doctor and is told that she is pregnant. As she was previously told she couldn’t have children, this comes as quite a surprise! It’s a miracle, right? It really is and it is tied to the silent prayer that Tin spoke when his sister almost suffocated him.
Does life get better for the family?
Erm…no! When Tin and Tina find out their adoptive mom is pregnant they are happy by the news. But they ask Lola if God wants to sacrifice the baby to save them! This has a connection to the miraculous birth of Jesus who was sent to Earth as a sacrifice. As Lola’s pregnancy can be considered a miracle, their question is justified. This leaves us with a bad feeling, of course, and one pressing question: Will the baby be safe?
After the baby is born, Lola doesn’t want to get him baptised. She lost her faith after losing a previous baby so doesn’t see the need to baptise her child to a God that she no longer believes in.
Tin and Tina are determined that the baby should be baptised, however. When the parents are busy elsewhere, they take the child and hold him by his legs over the swimming pool. They then proceed to dip the baby under the water.
Thankfully, Lola sees what is happening and saves the baby before he drowns. She is angry at the twins and slaps them, and she is also angry at Adolfo for watching football instead of his new child.
Following this near-tragic event, the twins are taken back to the convent as Lola and Adolfo have finally had enough of their terrible albeit seemingly quite innocent behaviour.
Are Lola and Adolfo happy when the twins leave them?
Lola and Adolfo try to move on with their life after the twins have left them but it’s a struggle. It’s particularly hard for Lola who feels guilty about taking them back to the convent. Quite why she is so grieved, we don’t know. Not only had her adopted children almost killed her baby son, but they previously killed a boy from their school because he bullied them. They also tied her to a bed at one point which was their way of making sure she got plenty of bed rest!
Still, feel guilty Lola does, although she soon starts to think ill of them again when she suspects them of setting fire to her house. In truth, it’s a bolt of lightning that causes the fire which not only destroys the house but kills Adolfo too, but Lola is sure the twins have started it.
During the blaze, Lola becomes alarmed when she realizes her baby has gone missing and assumes the twins have taken the child. She can hear the baby crying but can’t find him. It’s at this point that she needs a miracle to happen. After being prompted by the outline of a crucifix that was previously on a wall, she is reminded of the pillow case incident. On remembering this, she wraps her face in a blanket and tries to suffocate herself. Presumably, God hears her prayers because at this point Lola is then able to find her baby.
She leaves the house which is now a broken mess and the film then jumps forward in time.
What happens to the twins?
Lola and the baby end up in hospital after the fire. When Lola is visited by Mother Asunción from the convent, she is told her husband was struck by the wrath of God when the lightning hit him. This seems a little harsh – we don’t think God would do this to a man who was only trying to fix the aerial on the roof when he was struck – but this is the nun’s assertion anyway.
Lola enquires about the twins and their whereabouts as she still thinks they were at her house. But the nun tells her they were at the convent the whole night.
The movie ends with a graveyard scene where Adolfo is being buried. Lola seems to have forgiven the twins and accepted their innocence, as they are stood with her at the funeral. After the priest finishes his prayer, the twins say “Amen.” So too does Lola who appears to have regained her faith after the miracle of her child’s birth and rescue from the fire.
It can be assumed the twins are now living with Lola again. We don’t know this for sure but if this is true, here’s hoping she doesn’t bring home a puppy for them at Christmas or Easter!
Read More: Tin & Tina Movie Review
Aakanksha Pareek’s interpretation is 100% the same with mine. This is the only logical interpretation, anything other than this not logical. I don’t think the mother is dumb, she realized she is not more powerful than the religious system, she can only pretend to fit in this belief system to survive. So at the end, she is not fighting, she surrendered.
The kids are nothing but evil. They used the bible as an excuse to cover their evil deeds.
Thanks for your thoughts Gabriela and thanks for commenting on my article. Your suggestions make a lot of sense. I’m interested to know if others picked up on the same things you did.
Wow really interesting ideas and interpretations! I do however believe the kids were not in the the house the night Adolfo died.
When Lola heard her baby cry Aldolfo might have also heard it and moved the baby to the basinet to the other room so he could keep a closer eye on him (in attemps to change and be better more attentive dad). When Lola was searching the room the baby was later found in, she never fully went in the first time. She could’ve totally missed him and not heard him because he had gone back to sleep. The reason why she later heard him crying is because the smoke might have woken him up at the same time she was suffocating herself with the pillowcase.
But the bully’s death was definitely the kids. Since there would be no other reason why the kids were not present during their choir performance, and when the bully came in the church in bad conditions, they did not even bother turning around. As if they already knew. No shock and no remorse(because of course they believed they were doing “Gods work”).
One more thing. I dont know if yall noticed that one of the kids in the convent in the beginning of the movie was badly scarred on the side of her/his face. I totally think that was the twins as well, a penance.
Thanks for your thoughts. Really interesting to read. You might be right with your opinions. The ending is abstract and is open to interpretation but I like your ideas.
Well, I have seen a lot of forums where people are saying that Lola is dumb for believing the kids’ innocence and taking them back in. Well, I agree, the movie was boring and had illogical sequences, but here is what I think.
Tin and Tina are nothing but evil. They hide all their evil deeds behind Bible. Lola is right in doubting them after the dog incident particularly. The husband Adolfo is an idiot for trusting those kids and sidelining her wife even when she presents him with the drawings she finds in their Bible.
After giving the twins back to the convent, the guilt that Lola feels is because she is still in doubt if the kids were actually innocent and if she gave them up only because now she has her own.
She also is not satisfied with Adolfo who hardly takes out time for family and whose carelessness caused their new born to be almost drowned and killed by the kids.
Now, skipping to the climax, I feel the kids were in the house that night. When Adolfo puts brakes all of a sudden as something was crossing the road, that something were Tin and Tina who hid in their house.
The twins were responsible for Adolfo’s burning and the baby getting disappeared.
When they see that Lola is now resorting to their ways of seeing the so-called GOD, they decide to return the baby.
A doubtful Lola asks nuns to confirm if the kids are responsible for this, but when she receives a negative response, she realizes that there is nothing she can do to prove the twins wrong. The nun and the twins will always find a way to claim innocence. She cannot gather any evidence. She realizes that the twins killed Adolfo because he burned the Bible and let the baby live because she attempted something that was shadowing the twins’s beliefs.
Lola now realizes that by keeping the kids away, she and her baby are not safe. Rather she will keep them closer and pretend as if she now has the same beliefs as them.