Dual is set in the near future where human cloning is possible but mostly outlawed. Karen Gillan plays a woman who is diagnosed with something that might as well be a brain cloud… she’ll die soon enough, but she’ll feel fine right up until the end. One way human cloning is legal is to help your loved ones avoid having to grieve by cloning yourself before your death. Gillan does this… only to realize everyone likes her clone more than her.

It took a few minutes to realize I’d just landed squarely in Lobster territory. Wooden acting to wooden dialog, intentionally. A movie full of absurd monotone dialog that explains exactly what is happening or what’s being felt. It took a few, but I got on its wavelength and enjoyed the weird.

Gillan (and the rest of the cast) are good enough actors to know their flat acting is intentional I’m not entirely sure why they are though. I thought, perhaps, it’s something to do with the clones… as in maybe everyone has been cloned once before. Or maybe it’s saying something about the the death of personality or ego due to the existential crises of possibly being replaced by clones. Or the filmmaker saying the self is irrelevant when a blank copy of you can be “programmed” to be you. I’m not sure.

But maybe that’s beside the point to the film’s… comedy? Yeah, every one in awhile someone says something in that flat, stilted way that’s outrageously funny. And I shorted and chuckled on a decent number of occasions.

Otherwise it’s a bit of a slow burn film that’s trading in familiar sci-fi territory. But that’s ok since I think what it says is done in a unique enough manner. I enjoyed this film but didn’t love it. I thought it started to wind down a little in the third act and I got a little antsy. That said, the final moments have enough craftiness to make me leave the theater debating exactly what had happened.

So it’s worth a watch as long as you can groove along slowly to the artificiality of the acting and writing. Realize its intentional, maybe deduce why, but generally go along with its plotfull of existential crises. And enjoy the Karen Gillan show… it’s Karen Gillans all the way down.

Score: 80