Dual (2022) | Film Review

Sarah (Karen Gillan) is sardonic, disinterested, and seemingly unaffected by life. By any estimation, her appearance is that of someone stirring in a sea of depressive angst. Even Sarah’s communication with her boyfriend, Peter (Beulah Koale), is muted and disassociated. Sarah learns that her bland existence is now on a timer, as she is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and suddenly she becomes enamored with the concept of purchasing a clone to take her place with Peter and her equally detached mother in an effort to console their grieving. Yet as things so often happen in a Riley Stearns film, the events in Dual do not go as planned.

Sarah goes into remission, meaning her clone – known here as a replacement – is no longer needed. Furthermore, the laws are very clear that only one SARAH can exist. After her clone learns of her imminent decommission status, she takes legal action. This gives both versions of Sarah one year to prepare for a battle to the death, with the winner taking on the mantle of Sarah’s life. Of course, you need a trainer to prepare you for such a Hunger Games moment, and that is where Aaron Paul arrives to hilariously deadpan his way against type as a master assassin of sorts.

While Aaron Paul is always a welcoming joy to any enterprise, Karen Gillan is the soul of Dual. This is her film, through-and-through, and the actress revels in the opportunity to showcase why she is consistently the best aspect of the majority of films she’s in. Gillan’s delivery and wit is as dry as dust, and her little touches to otherwise minor scenes truly elevates Dual’s potential. The only disappointing aspect of her role might be that this career best performance from Gillan will likely go less celebrated than other projects like Jumanji, simply because it is so damn quietly nuanced and under the radar.

Gillan breathes life back into Sarah, just as Sarah begins to realize she has been wasting hers for this entire time. It is a common issue with the human race that we are slow to understand the value of our surroundings, our family, our friends, ourselves. Sarah’s a burgeoning flower of possibilities she now desperately wants to explore… if she can live to witness those experiences. As Gillan’s subtle dark humor does its magic, she also manages to convince us that her character deserves a second chance at the life she has squandered.

In 2015 with Faults, I noted Riley Stearns was a director to watch. With 2019’s The Art of Self-Defense, he established himself as a must-see filmmaker, and Dual cements Riley Stearns as one of the most exciting storytellers creating today. This entire concept has been addressed in various fashions before, sure, but not as Stearns has done here with his wry epitaph on grief. As he has also done in each of his previous two films, Stearns’ satirical storyline seems to be journeying one way down a path, before swiftly kicking your ass into another lane that we should have been paying attention to all along. And that is meant as a compliment.

Not only does the unpredictable nature of the script work to the film’s advantage, it also slyly implants conversation pieces to address long after the closing credits. Why are we as a society so obsessed with grieving those we lost? Could someone with our exact DNA make stronger choices and live our best lives? Why do so many of us take our lives for granted? These and more questions are seeds planted throughout the course of the film, disguised as morbidly comic asides. That is the beauty of Stearns’ ability as a writer, and why Dual is a must-see.

Follow our further discussion on Dual via this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast: