The first minutes into writer-director Riley Stearns’ Dual is a suburban take on what would happen at the Ok Corral in the old west. Instead of two cowboys walking a certain amount of paces to draw their guns, there’s a football field with two people and a table of weapons. While an utterly tranquil crowd looks on, two men utilize their tools of choice in a fight to the death. When one meets his demise, the audience finds out that this is a clone — because, in Stearns’ world he creates, only one copy of a person can exist at a time. The Sci-Fi genre has investigated the relationship between cloning and morbidity. Is it genuinely possible to make a copy of yourself and for it all the small intricacies that make you….well you?

Sarah (Karen Gillan) has just found out she will die soon because of a rare illness infecting her stomach. An average person would be inflicted with copious amounts of panic, with any regular person — perhaps even reduced to a pool of tears. Not Sara — a matter of fact, she takes the news rather well. Her even-tempered manner takes aback the doctor, who informs Sarah that she has a 2% chance of survival. Inside the social construct of Dual, everybody is a straight shooter. Dialogue is given in a straightforward, wordy, and deadpan manner. Sometimes this style of delivery can come across as cruel. But character interactions are so blunt they invoke laughter (Sarah even asks herself, “why aren’t I crying?” after the prognosis). Before leaving her mother and emotionally distant boyfriend Peter (Beulah Koale) behind, Sara opts to have a replacement — a clone going by the name “Sarah’s double.” This copy is supposed to live with the current Sarah and learn all her likes, dislikes, family memories, and mannerisms concerning her relationships with other people.

At first, there were some uncomfortable and humorous questionnaires from the double — asking about favorite sexual positions and clothes and why the style might be outdated. It’s helped along with Gillan’s delivery of the script. At first, Sarah’s reactions are so robotic, it’s hard to distinguish who the double is. But as her double asserts her independence, Sarah feels forgotten – she displays an uneasy quiver that slides through the constant poker face. Months go by, and Sarah gets better by a stroke of luck. At that point, her clone is scheduled to be decommissioned, but her mom and boyfriend have other plans. Sarah’s double has gotten so ingrained in the compact unit that they prefer her over the original. Thus, a dual is put on a calendar in a year when one version of Sarah will survive — a rather gruesome ideology to follow because of the government’s rules.

In Dual, Stearns presents an ethical question posed in other science fiction movies — particularly with androids and things engineered to be like humans. This film is a place where emotions matter little. So, does a mirror image of a person deserve to be counted as a separate entity? Sarah finds a trainer named Trent (Aaron Paul), who teaches her the survival skills to win the dual with the bit of money she has left. Her training includes watching a series of highly violent, B-movies with “terrible plots” to desensitize her. Sarah undergoes this metamorphosis, becoming a killing machine akin to The Terminator. For a film that focuses on mortality and who gets to define what humanity is, Gillan excels, playing two characters that are both similar and different. There’s a loneliness a person experiences where they realize life is about to over. The audience gets to experience from both viewpoints. When the prospect arises of her impending death, slight outbursts of emotion show, even more so when Sarah nobody wants the original version.

Life threw the real Sarah a curveball, and she has to pick up the pieces. Her clone didn’t ask for any of this — yet is placed inside a life that was a lie. Can they co-exist, and can they have time to? By the film’s conclusion, Dual can be viewed in two ways; either as a dark comedic hammer of constant truth or a conventional science-fiction thriller. The film’s finale is the product of Stearns wanting the viewer to expect the unexpected. Like the persistent dialogue themes, Dual may not be for everyone. but it’s something that will keep you interested.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Read our reviews from Sundance 2022 here