In the near future, a process called “replacement” allows dying individuals to clone themselves in Dual. The goal: their living loved ones will no longer have to miss them. When Sarah (Karen Gillan) starts vomiting blood one day and is told stiffly that she will assuredly die very soon, she decides to gift her loved ones with a double of herself. When she later finds out that her terminal illness is in sudden remission, she must legally fight her double to the death in a broadcast dual, as only one of them is allowed to survive.

Whereas some auteurs have a very tangible direction to their satire, Riley Stearns finds comfort just playing around and riffing on the absurdity that he’s cooked up. His most measured film (also his debut) Faults, explored the unraveling of a failed cult leader whereas his sophomore film The Art of Self-Defense centered on a weakling pensioner learning to stand up for himself. In that previous film, Sterns experimented with awkward dark comedy and rigid performances but he’s gone a step further here. Everything here is bogus, unrecognizable, bizarre. Sterns is a mind that likes seeing how far down the rabbit hole he can go. The trouble is, it’s less and less clear what exactly he’s trying to find down there and one is left wondering what the point of it all is. For my stake, the explosive laughs make it a worthwhile ride.

Whatever his aim, he approaches it fearlessly. Dual exists somewhere in the cross section between a Yorgos Lanthimos movie (specifically Dogtooth or The Killing of a Sacred Deer) and an episode of Black Mirror. It’s strange, singular, mysteriously distinct, and very funny. Sterns’ hilariously chaotic dark comedy plays entirely by its own rules using labored unnatural dialogue and stiff performances to cut right to the weird center of his creation, making audiences catch up with his quirky approach.

Like some books teach you how to read them, Dual teaches you how to watch it. At first, this can be jarring. The dialogue is intentionally stilted. The performances follow suit. Characters talk like robots. Especially Sarah. She never abbreviates her words. She never conjoins them. Everything is you “do not”. Never “don’t”. The concern is comedy is alien to her and one cannot picture her telling a joke. Stearn’s script is purposefully stiff, cringingly awkward. It reads like an alien playwright trying to mimic human behavior. Or one of those I ‘forced a bot to watch 1000 hours of human interaction and then write a script’ memes. The lack of humanity is the point and it’s Stern’s secret comedic weapon.

Even the way Sarah moves is stiff. Like a stick figure. Or one of those four-legged Boston Dynamics robot-dogs. Gillian is unwaveringly weird in the role and commits to the bit with her every fiber. Everything about her is off. There’s some wholly unnatural and inaccessible to Sarah and Gillan expertly keeps her an uncharismatic and strange presence. There’s a sincerity to her awkwardness that’s hard to train. It’s as if her whole performance is the answer to the question: what is opposite energy of a movie star. That’s not to discount her work here, it’s singularly off-putting in just the way it’s intended.

The clinical, cold world that Sterns plops Sarah in exists almost in a universe parallel to our own. Even interactions between loved one seem forced, without warmth. The only whiff of chemistry exists between Sarah and her self-defense trainer, played by Aaron Paul. Perhaps this is only suiting for a world where one can opt to be replaced by a carbon copy of their genetic matter. In a society where kill or be killed is court-mandated, maybe human compassion falls away. One is never entirely sure what Sterns’ point is but the jet black comedy of it is all is played so straight-faced that it’s hard not to laugh along with his bizarre vision of emotionless futurism.

Sarah’s interactions with the outside world are limited and so we only get a limited sense of scale and scope. The world building suggested in the tense first scene ultimately doesn’t take on a lot of new dimensionality. One is left to imagine the other dictates of this derailed society but that leaves Dual feeling a bit lightweight, coming up shy of its full potential. Aggressively awkward, there’s nothing human to be found here. One wonders – is this how some experience life?

CONCLUSION: Riley Stearns’ bizarre work of mystery-satire ‘Dual’ features an intentionally stiff double Karen Gillan performance to create a ‘Black Mirror’-esque vision of reality where love and relationships are as shallow as they are replicable. Darkly hilarious and one of a kind.