Dual
RLJEOne lump of praise Charlie Brooker can be thrown is that his initially strong but subsequently overblown Black Mirror series has paved the way to a science-fiction boom that hopes to pray on human fear and real worries. Dual presents that perfect blend between a woefully terrifying real-world message and a concept that is beyond perception in the real world, but completely understandable and initially beneficial to those that need it. A terminally ill woman with the ability to transfer her memories, desires, and presence to ease the grief of a family. Dual deals with that outlet of grief with a relatively stretched concept of what can happen when technology is given the upper hand.
Technology on the front foot is such a vague concept that works extremely well for director Riley Stearns, whose work on The Art of Self-Defence crafted an initially strong concept that drifted towards a level of unbelievability that shattered the hard work of the first act. The same happens for Dual, which turns from a potentially poignant feature to a shoestring rendition of David Cronenberg, had the Videodrome director ever pondered grief as a state of denial than as a way for people to be sexually attracted to car crashes. Strange bloke. But Dual could have done with something as wild as that, especially in a sub-genre that continues to expand what audiences perceive as good taste. Titane knew that, but it managed to keep its message close to its chest as it crept towards an intense and upsetting finale.
While Karen Gillian and Aaron Paul make for engaging leads, they aren’t able to overcome that Cronenberg influence. Dual’s wild and unexplainable introduction hopes to showcase a smokescreen of intense and weird surroundings. All it does is hope to engage with a plight and action similar to that of Black Mirror but without the charm or irreverence. Instead, Stearns doubles down on the seriousness, a factor which he does not get quite right. An intensity that opens this feature desires an audience to suspend their disbelief for a world not introduced or explained, yet seemingly normal as two competitors trade crossbow bolts and knife slices with one another. It is a key example of how brutality in a feature can fail tremendously if not encountered correctly or displayed with reason.
It should be noted that Dual’s violence and the film as a whole do not fail for the direction taken, but for the suspiciously poor reveals, the dullard dialogue that spoon-feeds an audience what they already know if they have seen a science fiction feature before. Cloning is not new to the realm of filmmaking, although with the grand reveals and shocking discoveries made throughout Dual, audiences are asked to suspend their disbelief a little too long and far too often. The grief at the heart of it, the performances that linger on the “my goodness, isn’t technology rather silly,” ruin any chances of Gillian stealing the show. Instead, Dual cannot escape its influences. Black Mirror lingers over like a dark shadow, particularly the first series episode, Be Right Back, which tells the story of Dual in half the time and double the quality.