By: Andrew Wing

Dual is a 2022 American satirical science fiction thriller film written, directed, and produced by Riley Stearns (also directed Faults and The Art of Self-Defense). It stars Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Endgame), Beulah Koale (Hawaii Five-0), Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad, Westworld), and Theo James (The Divergent Series film trilogy, Archive).

The plot follows a woman (Gillan) who has to fight a clone of herself to the death after she unexpectedly recovers from a terminal illness.

The film premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2022. It was released in the United States on April 15, 2022, by RLJE Films.

THE GOOD

I’ll be honest, I did not think I was going to have the privilege of checking this movie out and reviewing it this soon. The reason being that it just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and despite its pretty good reviews, I wasn’t expecting it to be widely released not even a full three months after Sundance. Nevertheless, it came to the AMC+ streaming service which I have in May, and I quickly added it to the list. I mean we got Karen Gillan in a dual role playing both herself and her clone just a year after we saw Mahershala Ali do the same thing in Swan Song (see my full review here). So without further ado, was Gillan’s performance enough to make for a quality film? Keep reading to find out!

I won’t waste any time. I’ll get right into the main reason I checked this out, and that was seeing Karen Gillan’s dual performance. First things first, I just got to say that Gillan is a perfect match for this director’s style as she just totally understood the assignment. I thought her performance here was amazing and probably the best of her young career. She just did a fantastic job with her deadpan delivery and she was able to give so many different emotions to both her original character and her clone which truly is unfathomable to just a guy like me who watches a lot of movies. At the end of the day, she crushed this role and her performance alone made the film a very solid one.

Aside from Gillan who definitely gave the best performance, the next best performance belonged to Aaron Paul in his supporting role. He comes into this film about halfway through and he gets a lot of screen time and I just had a lot of fun with his character. There were a lot of enjoyable moments with his character, but there was one in particular where he and Gillan’s original character are slow-motion fighting and narrating their every single move, and it was so hilarious. All in all, I thought Paul nailed this role, and similar to Gillan, his acting style is a perfect match for the director.

And when it comes to the director Riley Stearns, his direction here was just great. I still need to watch his previous film The Art of Self-Defense which is currently streaming on Hulu starring Jesse Eisenberg, because apparently, his style is similar in both that and this. But when it comes to his style, I already love it after seeing just one of his films. Through his direction, he was able to create this very surreal world with this very odd and dry sense of humor where all the characters are slightly more robotic than people are in real life as they deliver everything very dry and weird. He just understands his style in his own way and I can’t wait to see what he does next because I’m already a fan.

Continuing with Stearns, not only did he direct, but he wrote the film as well and this writing was impressive. Dual takes place in a world where you can clone yourself with the intention of the original personal dying, but when that doesn’t go through like in this, the clones are forced to duel to the death in a public spectacle televised event. I mean come on…who comes up with this stuff? I mean I loved this premise despite its absurdity and I had a lot of fun indulging in this premise. Also, continuing with the writing, it’s a really funny movie. I laughed a lot at the dialogue as the humor was just totally up my alley.

THE BAD

I really enjoyed this film, but unfortunately, I can see most people not liking it. A big reason why is this film just makes you ask a lot of questions that you just shouldn’t ask. Questions like why these characters don’t elicit normal human emotions, and many many more. I would totally understand people not liking this, but what I would suggest is to just not look at the big picture and just try to enjoy the dark dry comedy that’s right in front of you.

Also, if you’re looking for a movie where you can emotionally connect to the characters, this is absolutely not it. But the director knew that from the start and he really didn't care. But that is just what makes this movie an experience as this film really gets to the heart of emptiness and nothingness. Need proof? Just wait until you see the end of Dual, which I didn’t love to be completely honest, but it still made me appreciate the director’s work as he was trying to show us the bigger picture of the world he was painting.

THE VERDICT

Behind a career-best performance from Karen Gillan in a double role, Dual is a satirical science fiction thriller that shows Riley Stearns is already one of the most unique writer-directors working today. It’s off-beat, absurd, and emotionally hollow, but Gillan’s deadpan delivery, Stearns’ dark humor, and a great supporting performance from Aaron Paul that provided a lot of laughs made this film really work for me, and I can’t wait to see what Riley Stearns does next.