"Dual" a drolly imagined sci-fi black comedy with two deadpan Karen Gillans

Dual (2022)

Not everyone will be on filmmaker Riley Stearns’ oddball wavelength, but it’s viewer’s choice. In the case of droll, tightly scripted sci-fi black comedy “Dual,” they’ll wish they could be. In what is very much from Stearns’ voice, the film is dryly comic, offbeat, and anchored by dual performances from Karen Gillan that are subtly disparate but equally deadpan and finely tuned.

Set in the near future, “Dual” doesn’t begin with a long-winded scroll about the status quo, nor does it ever get bogged down in world-building. Writer-director Riley Stearns (“The Art of Self-Defense”) trusts his audience enough to just settle into this version of the real world and let the story unfold without much hand-holding. Stearns puts one on edge from the very beginning with a droning hum. There seems to be something of a lethal duel between two men (Theo James) being played on a football field, complete with spectators in the stands and a videographer capturing it all as if it were a Friday Night Lights game by way of “The Hunger Games.” And then the story proper begins.

The over-eating, over-drinking, but underachieving Sarah (Karen Gillan) might as well be all alone in her life. Her boyfriend (Beulah Koale) with whom she video chats seems to always be away on business, and she tends to ignore her nagging mother’s phone calls. Once she’s diagnosed with a rare terminal illness, Sarah opts for “replacement,” a cloning procedure that will (with Sarah’s wishful thinking) ease her loved ones’ grief. With a tube of Sarah’s spittle and just an hour-long wait, Sarah’s double is created and wants to be a better version of the real Sarah. Ten months later, a margin of error in the doctor’s test results miraculously makes Sarah experience complete remission, and that changes things a tad when Sarah wants to have her double decommissioned, but those in Sarah’s life prefer the double. Sarah’s only chance to remain the one version of herself on this planet (and not a dual) is through a court-mandated duel to the death. Get the title now? Read the rest of the review at Phindie here. 

Grade: B +

RLJE Films is releasing “Dual” (94 min.) in theaters on April 15, 2022 and on digital, on demand and streaming on AMC+ on May 20, 2022.