Oh joy, another clone film. I’ve only seen a dozen of these this year (so far). This one deliberately sets clone against original, which seems … wrong. Life is tough enough without you opposing you. The opening moments in which a man battles to death against his facsimile redefine the words: “I’m my own worst enemy.”
We are in the near future in which cloning happens with such reckless abandon the government has to compensate from time-to-time. That compensation takes the form of a duel between the original and the clone; winner gets control of the life, the name, the titles held, etc. … or just moves on to the semi-finals. I’m not sure how that works.
I am sure that if there were government sanctioned fights to the death in the United States, they’d be on pay-per-view and get millions upon millions of viewers and millions upon millions of fingers pointing at how we’ve failed as a society and millions upon millions of stupid people blaming “woke.” In the opening here, the duel takes place on a football field in front of sparsely filled bleachers. The parties are given a table of weaponry, but the scoreboards remain empty and there aren’t even cheerleaders. Geez.
Sarah (Karen Gillan) has a crappy life. She doesn’t like her boyfriend, her mother, or her life in general. And then –in a pretty funny scene- she finds out that she has a terminal disease. It’s funny because the doctor admits there is potential for error but still insists Sarah will die. So whatchagonnado? Sarah makes a clone of herself to spare her loved ones the pain of her death. And I went from “on board” to “turned off” in a split second.
Sarah’s double, who literally goes by “Sarah’s Double” doesn’t like Sarah. At all. Now this just bugs me. I hate it when originals and clones don’t mix. It makes no sense. First off, why did you get cloned if there’s gonna
be hostility there and, more importantly, if your clone doesn’t get you, who will? There is nobody more attuned to everything that makes you you than you. Who is going to understand your embarrassment, your irrational fears, your rational fears, your traumatic moments, your fetishes, your private behavior if not you? Being hostile to the only person who will truly get you seems self-defeating at best and self-loathing at worst. Perhaps, that’s the point.
Naturally, Sarah doesn’t die and the clone wants custody of the life, so a duel is set and the guy from “Breaking Bad” (Aaron Paul) shows up to train Sarah on how to kill herself. Yada yada yada.
Dual deliberately skirted around several the larger issues of (in no particular order) existentialism, self-identity, death penalty, hunting for sport, and justice in order to make a film about one-on-one confrontation. I would like to have seen the film taken on a bigger issue or two, but I’m not sure how it could. The biggest problem here, however, is not content but main character. Not only is Sarah dislikable in two forms: the first comes off as whiny and the second as hostile, Karen Gillan absolutely phoned this film in. I’m reminded of a review of A Kiss Before Dying in which it was reported that Sean Young, playing twins, managed to deliver two bad performances. That is exactly what we have here. And the movie didn’t compensate for this at all.
There once was a woman near mortality
Who got cloned as a mere formality
Turns out, she didn’t die
And nobody wondered why
We never discussed any issue of morality
Rated R, 94 Minutes
Director: Riley Stearns
Writer: Riley Stearns
Genre: Our screwed future
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Rival identical twins?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Harmonious identical twins
