Following his deadpan dark comedies Faults and The Art of Self-Defense, Riley Stearns heads into sci-fi territory with Dual, which still finds slivers of humor in a story of a terminally ill woman who 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. Ahead of an April 15 theatrical release, the trailer has now arrived.
Michael Frank said in his Sundance review, “Stearns, critically successful in his first two films, will likely find a more divisive audience with Dual, which bears an outstanding premise and mixed execution. Starring Karen Gillan as Sarah, this light sci-fi drama looks like the current world. Little has been altered; if anything the technology looks like it’s from the 1990s. The only difference seems to be a cloning procedure available to those that are dying—like Sarah, who opts to undergo a process that conveniently only takes one hour. A woman with a constantly traveling fiancé, Sarah’s loneliness rarely exists offscreen. It’s all-consuming.”
See the trailer (via Collider) and poster below. One can also read our interview with Stearns here.
Dual arrives in theaters on April 15 and on VOD on May 20.