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Dual Review
Image Credit: RLJE Films
Loading...Directed by: Riley Stearns
Written by: Riley Stearns
Starring:
Karen Gillan – Sarah
Aaron Paul – Trent
Beulah Koale – Peter
Theo James – Robert Michaels
Maija Paunio – Sarah’s Mother
June Hyde – Gastroenterologist
Rea Lest – Emergency Room Receptionist
Kristofer Gummerrus – Tom
Running Time: 94 minutes
Rated R for violent content, some sexual content, language and graphic nudity.
We’ve all thought it would be great to have a clone at some point in our lives. Or maybe that’s just me, because I’ve certainly thought at times, “Man, it would be great if there was another me running around so we split everything I have to do and have more free time.” Okay, so if I’m being honest, the thought tends to be more, “I wish I had a clone I could make do all my obligations so I could have free time.” Close enough, right?
As it turns out though, having a clone isn’t quite so great. At least, not in the world of Riley Stearns’ Dual. The bone-dry dark comedy, which hits theaters this weekend, envisions a world in which cloning is possible, but it only comes in unfortunate situations. And occasionally, as Karen Gillan’s Sarah finds out, it can lead to you having to fight your double to the death because, as the Highlander says, “There can be only one.”
Gillan stars as Sarah, a woman who is stuck in a rut. Her boyfriend is away for work, and they only communicate in awkward conversations over video chat. She spends her night drinking wine, ducking phone calls from her mom and watching ludicrously titled porn. Things only get worse when she wakes up bleeding from the mouth all over her bed and visits the doctor where she finds she has an incurable, very rare and terminal condition. The doctor tells her she has a zero chance of surviving, and a 98% chance of succumbing. When she asks about the other 2%, she’s told it’s a margin of error with the doctor saying, “Nothing is absolutely certain, though this most certainly is.”
Staring death in the face – and yet not able to really feel anything about it – she is presented with the option of replacement. A clone will be grown for the sake of her loved ones. After reading a pamphlet and watching an awful promotional video, she agrees to getting the clone. The problem comes that her boyfriend and mother end up liking the clone more than her and when she suddenly and miraculously goes into remission, they don’t seem all that happy. Neither does the clone, who invokes her 28th Amendment right to fight her original to the death for the right to live.
Form there, Stearns’ comedy propels itself toward a seemingly inevitable conclusion. As Sarah seeks to fight for a life she didn’t seem happy with and didn’t seem worried about losing until it was going to be lost to what she sees as a better her, she begins training with a combat expert in Trent (Aaron Paul). It’s in these moments and after that Dual really starts to find its strength, allowing Stearns’ dead serious, monotone characters to bounce off each other in interesting ways.
Gillan plays Sarah and Sarah’s double with an absolute minimum of emotion, save for brief spikes of feeling that threaten to break through her façade. Gillan has done deadpan before, and her work as Nebula in the MCU serves her well here in burying her emotional beats for the benefit of the material. In one moment, when she realizes that she’s going to live but she’s lost her life to her double, she snaps in a real fit of emotion that hits hard because it’s such a spark of feeling compared to the rest of the film.
Stearns’ films are known for being challenging but rewarding works to really engage with, and Dual falls right along those lines. He’s refined his deadpan to a laser focus here and while it may be too much (or rather, too little) for some audiences, once Sarah’s illness brings her into conversations with doctors that have the worst bedside manner imaginable the straight-faced performances help the comedy stand out. Those include Paul, who thoroughly understands the assignment and gives Trent a weary coldness hits Gillan’s own resigned performance with more sparks than such performances might lead you to expect.
The fact that all the characters within this bleak, cold world have the same generally withdrawn, numb demeanors sets a real mood for the film and speaks volumes to what the world is like without having to spell it out. Stearns gives us just enough of the greater world through looks at the cloning company and a prologue involving another duel between original and double that it’s clear everyone is bad at people-ing in this intentionally unspecified corner of the US.
And yet amidst all the deadpan, there are moments of sublime hilarity and pathos. The film has a sterile quality to it, which allows the scenes involving saturated colors or moments of emotion to strike home. Late in the film, Gillan’s character visits a duels survivor therapy group with some clearly traumatized people, and the stories the survivors tell are alternately hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Dual’s deadpan does allow some cracks to start to show as the film progresses and it starts to struggle with how to bring its themes to the surface. It wants to say a lot about how we value life vs. how we value living, with some pointed shots at the medical industry, capitalism, the difficulty of human connection, and how the grass is always greener when it comes to self-image. The theses often feel right on the tip of the film’s tongue, but it doesn’t quite find insight as much as it exposes the raw nerves of the matter. Add in an ending that, while hitting hard, will certainly rub some people the wrong way in how it subverts expectations, and you have what’s sure to be an incredibly divisive film.
That said, a divisive film doesn’t always mean a bad one, and that’s certainly not the case here. Dual’s ice-cold demeanor is not going to be for everyone, to say the least, and its intentionally off-putting style will drive some away. But for those who can handle its tone, the genuinely funny moments couched in intricately modulated performances will make this a nihilistic, darkly funny notch in the win column for Stearns and company.
Dual is available in theaters starting April 15th.
