A woman who was in denial of being sick finds out she is a very short period from her own death. Following this shocking news, she decides to get a clone to replace her in her life and that of those around her to lessen the hurt to them. Following a happy turn in her health, her clone is scheduled to be decommissioned, which the clone goes against. This leads to them having to have a dual to the death.
Written and directed by Riley Stearns, Dual has some great ideas throughout, but the execution comes off a bit lackluster. The film has ideas about cloning and its potential effects on population. The ethics of it are very vaguely approached in favor of making this a film more about the preparation for the dual between the original and her clone. This leads to a film more about training than about anything else and it feels like it missed very important points and a chance to make itself into an important film with deeper looks into the why and the how, but also into the affect onto the population living with these clones. The film feels like more or less like an overview of an idea with a basic, lower-tier action training film.
When it comes to the performances, they all look like the actors were bored. Was this a choice from the director? If so, it does nothing for the film here as it makes it look like no one wants to be there, no one cares about their character, none of the characters really care about the outcome. Yes, this may be by design, but this design doesn’t often work and it doesn’t really work here. Having the clones be blank at first would have been a great way to do this and having the non-clones have more emotions would have better shown the difference between the two and given the audience characters to connect with. As it is, there are barely any emotions here, so barely anything for the viewer to connect with. This is not an issue with one or two of the characters, but it’s basically all of them, so all the performances are beyond minimal and show a lack of emotions from pretty much all of the characters in just about any situations.
On the technical side of things, the film looks decent and has music that fits, but none of it is really something to write home about. The film’s look seems to go with the story and the performances, so it makes it a bit more obvious that the lack of emotions or minimal emotions shown by the cast is part of the design for this film. However, this design lacks a way to connect with viewers.
Dual is one of those films that is just middle of the road, but due to the way the performances are and the story evolves, it becomes so bland, it’s hard to remember any of it after the credits roll. Considering the cast involved, viewers would be correct in expecting something much stronger here, something much more interesting.
Available in Theaters April 15th.