Dual Review

PLOT: A terminally ill woman named Sara (Karen Gillan) has a clone made so that its presence can ease the suffering of her grieving family when she passes away. However, when she goes into remission, she discovers that she’ll now have to fight the clone to the death, with the winner getting to continue living as Sara.

REVIEW: Riley Stearns’s Dual comes out hot on the heels of a similarly themed film called Swan Song, which premiered on Apple TV+ a few months ago. In it, a terminally ill man has a clone created to care for his family after he’s gone. It was a meditative tear-jerker, but Dual almost plays like a darkly humorous spoof. Here, Karen Gillan’s Sara makes the odd choice to be cloned, even though she has a relationship with her live-in boyfriend (Beulah Koale) that’s frosty at best, while she can’t stand her mother’s constant intrusions. She doesn’t have anyone who needs to be comforted but still has a clone made.

The idea here is that Sara’s supposed to spend the rest of her time teaching the clone how to be her, but in the end, her double is different enough from her that everyone in her orbit not only knows she’s been cloned but prefers the clone to Sara. It’s a dark, cynical way to kick off the premise, and it works beautifully due to Karen Gillan’s deadpan performance and Riley Stearns’s off-kilter imagination.

Stearns is quickly developing a distinctive voice. As in his previous film, The Art of Self-Defence, everyone here seems just a little off. They speak in a hilariously matter-of-fact way that makes the movie feel like everyone in it is demented. Still, Stearns also has a lot to say about loneliness and the notion of feeling trapped in an existence where everyone’s demands on you are so great you lose yourself. As in The Art of Self-Defence, it takes a violent crisis to reawaken the hero to some extent.

Gillan’s terrific in the lead, and the action chops she picked up working for the MCU and Jumanji serve her well here. Sara starts as physically incapable, but the same rule that insists she fight her clone to the death also allows her a year to train for this eventual battle. She hires a trainer, memorably played by Aaron Paul, who feels very much like the guy Eisenberg in The Art of Self Defence could have become, making me wonder if perhaps this was written as a straight-follow up initially. Like Gillan, Paul plays it ultra deadpan, with him training her on weapons and hand-to-hand combat so that she’ll be able to kill her clone and take back her life. Their chemistry is excellent, and the low-key friendship that builds up between the two of them is charming.

Where Dual may lose some people is in the unexpected third act. Up to here, the movie seems to be building up to one thing, but Stearns doesn’t seem interested in delivering the expected climax for a film like this, opting to go in another direction. Some will love this twist; others will hate it. To me, it’s so unusual that I’m not sure he actually could have ended it another way, as to deliver the expected climax almost would have betrayed the movie’s skewed vibe. The Art of Self Defence had a similar ending, and indeed Stearns seems to be developing a specific voice as a director. While I hesitate to call him commercial, I also think he’s a cult figure just waiting to happen. I had a good time with Dual, although it’ll probably rub some viewers the wrong way.

Sundance 2022

GREAT

8