DUAL: The Trouble With Gillans

Writer-director Riley Stearns brings his drier-than-dust sense of humor (previously seen in Faults and The Art of Self-Defense) to the science-fiction genre in Dual, a sharp little thriller that premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Starring Karen Gillan as a terminally ill woman who commissions a clone of herself to take her place when she’s gone, the film is odd almost to a fault—in other words, if you cannot tolerate Stearns’ signature style of deadpan dialogue, don’t bother giving this one a shot. But if you do, you’ll be treated to a wonderfully weird set of, well, dual performances from Gillan as her characters (and the audience) wrestle with what it means to be truly alive.

Mirror, Mirror

Sarah (Gillan) lives a seemingly aimless life; an average day consists of her binging on fast food and alcohol before settling in to watch some porn or chat online with her boyfriend, Peter (Beulah Koale), who is away on business. What Sarah does for a living is not made clear, but her lack of desire to do anything worthwhile with her life is. So, she takes the news that she’s terminally ill with a mysterious disease surprisingly well: “Why am I not crying?”

In the strange near-future society that Sarah lives in, it is possible to commission a clone to take your place if you know you are going to die: just spit in a vial, and an hour later a fully-grown version of you will pop out of the lab, ready to go home with you and learn the ropes of living your life. This way, by the time you die, the clone will be ready to slip into your role as though nothing ever happened to you.

The problem is that Sarah’s Double (also Gillan, natch) is a little too enthusiastic about taking Sarah’s place, going as far as contacting Sarah’s mother (Maija Paunio) without Sarah’s knowledge and stealing Peter away from her. So when it turns out Sarah is going to live after all and wants to decommission her clone, Sarah’s Double files a petition to remain alive anyways. The only sanctioned solution to their problem? The two of them must duel to the death on live television. (Obviously.)

Staying Alive

Determined to survive the duel, Sarah hires a personal combat trainer named Trent (Aaron Paul) to get her into fighting shape and heighten her tolerance for blood and violence. These training sequences, which involve Sarah and Trent fighting each other with various weapons while drily narrating their “injuries” out loud, are by far the most entertaining parts of the film; Gillan and Paul have great, strange chemistry and their reactions to each other (or lack thereof) will make you laugh out loud. The training montage is of course a classic element of many movies, but trust me when I say that the ones in Dual manage to both embrace and subvert the tropes you know in equal measure.

As both Sarah and Sarah’s Double, Gillan is great, fully embracing the film’s pitch-black sense of humor. Her performances give us plentiful opportunities to empathize with both characters throughout the film (even if I remained resolutely Team Sarah throughout). Indeed, Dual initially positions Sarah’s Double as the villain co-opting Sarah’s life, only for us to eventually see that slipping into another person’s shoes and, well, living life is not as fun and easy as she initially thought. This revelation leads to some of the most affecting (and amusing) scenes in Dual, such as when Sarah’s Double complains about Peter and Sarah’s mother to the very woman from whom she stole them.

The dialogue in Dual is blunt to the point of bludgeoning you, made all the more so by the characters’ almost monotonous delivery of it. Everyone speaks very fast, in very odd, even tones, to the point that they almost don’t sound like real people. This highly specific style could very easily not work, but in the context of Dual, it actually makes everything that happens in the film feel much more believable. Stearns does very little world-building in the traditional sense; there are no fancy futuristic gadgets to be seen throughout Dual, even if the plot itself is prime science-fiction. Rather, it’s everyone’s unusual behavior that really goes a long way towards selling the existence of this strange new world. After all, in a cinematic universe where clones are commissioned regularly, it makes sense that everyone sounds and acts a bit robotic, to the point that it is almost impossible to determine who is a double and who is a “real” human.

And what defines a “real” human, anyways? Sarah’s Double is far more enthusiastic about life than Sarah seemingly is, going out of her way to be a good daughter and girlfriend while Sarah prefers to do the bare minimum. Why shouldn’t Sarah’s Double be able to stick around in Sarah’s place if she’s actually going to make the most of her life? At one point, Sarah’s Double brings Sarah to a duel survivors’ support group, where humans and doubles alike discuss the residual trauma that has resulted from killing their other-self. Many of them thought that this would leave them free to live their lives to the fullest, but instead, they feel empty and full of regret. Was it worth fighting to stay alive if being alive was going to be like this?

Conclusion

Dual asks a lot of heady questions and leaves us contemplating the answers as the closing credits roll. If nothing else, the film should give you the motivation to go out and make the most of every moment you have—you never know when you might, you know, commission a clone who decides to take it all away.

What do you think? What are your favorite movies about clones or doppelgängers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Dual is released in theaters in the U.S. on April 15, 2022.

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