Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A terminally ill woman opts for a cloning procedure to ease her loss on her friends and family. When she makes a miraculous recovery, her attempts to have her clone decommissioned fail and lead to a court-mandated duel to the death.
Dual is a deadpan sci-fi dark comedy from Riley Stearns with a very distinctive affectless tone and a genuinely original premise — the clone duel as legal institution is a fresh satirical conceit. Karen Gillan delivers a committed dual performance that anchors the film's deliberately flat emotional register, which is a real acting achievement. Cinematography is competent and clean but unremarkable, serving the deadpan aesthetic without transcending it. The plot is inventively conceived but thin in the middle, relying heavily on the tone to carry what is a fairly slight narrative. The ending, while tonally consistent, feels anticlimactic and underdelivers on the premise's full satirical potential, leaving audiences unsatisfied rather than provocatively ambiguous.