Dual Parent Guide

Sarah (Karen Gillan) has been coasting by in life, seldom leaving her apartment, avoiding phone calls from her mother (Maija Paunio), and worrying about her increasingly distant boyfriend, Peter (Beulah Koale). But when she wakes up in a pool of her own blood, she finally sees a doctor only to discover that she has a rare and incurable disease which is all but certain to kill her. If she wants to spare her family the grief, she has an option: Sarah can have herself cloned before death, and her replacement can assume her life. After months of training her replacement, however, Sarah learns that she is not, in fact, dying, which opens up a far worse dilemma. The government doesn’t allow doubles to exist alongside the original but won’t immediately terminate the replacement either. Sarah is going to have to fight her double in a duel to the death if she wants to get her life back.

As with the other Riley Stearns film I’ve reviewed, The Art of Self Defense, this movie has a very robotic, deadpan style. I’m sure the director finds it amusing, but it has yet to get any less annoying for me. Capable actors like Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul disappear into a film which feels tonally monochromatic, lacking any qualities which would risk garnering the interest of the audience. If the characters are incapable of emoting or really expressing any interest in their own lives, I can’t see why I should care either.

I’m also not sure what genre the film is trying to be categorized as. There are strong science fiction elements, but it’s neither comedy nor drama, neither fish nor fowl. It’s just…a story. A weird, stilted story. There are elements which I suspect were intended to be funny, but which more often feel vaguely depressing or, more commonly, boring. If it were trying be a drama, I would expect some sort of human feeling to occur, but as it is, the film is an emotional Gobi desert.

If you’re one of the select few who have found the secret to enjoying these odd little films, you will not likely be put off by the occasional extreme profanities and graphic violence. However, I am certain parents won’t be thrilled with a scene five minutes into the movie which features the protagonist watching porn in her apartment. While it’s not visible, you can certainly hear more of it than you might like. For the rest of us, however, just skipping the movie altogether might be a wiser course of action. You could do something far more exciting with the time, like mow the lawn, or trim your toenails, or watch paint dry, maybe.