Dual

It's not for everyone, I'd admit.

If you enjoyed "the art of self defense", I think you would like this movie.

I think the title is clever, having a dual meaning.

Dual has an intriguing (albeit not entirely original) concept with a lot of comic and dramatic potential.

But the film is stuck in tonal limbo, being neither really funny nor especially poignant.

Dual's setting is its greatest strength. Its world always feels a little off-kilter and subtly dystopian.

But the storytelling is simply not engaging.

The writing feels bland and lazy.

The actors look mostly bored.

Riley Stearns is an interesting filmmaker. His first (and best) film Faults struck the right balance between absurdity and realism.

Since then he's gone on to adopt a more Lanthimos-ish tone, which seems overly self-conscious and gimmicky.

While that may have worked in his previous film, The Art of Self Defense, it doesn't in Dual.

I hope he returns to his earlier style for the next one.

Imagine there's a clone, who's now living in your home, an almost perfect doppelganger, taken straight from the lab's hanger. It's a sympathetic swap, as your time has come to drop, all your family need to know, is you'll never let them go.

Though your clock continues ticking, while your feet are all still kicking, and the one who thinks they're you, has made an impressive debut. But the law has made a rule, to remove one in a duel, when your name is on the roster, you can fight your own imposter.

Not that original and with little reflective value.

This movie is NOT targetted at an audience to make money for shareholders, it's made for artistic reasons. It's not made to entertain you, but I do still think it is ONLY interesting for a niche audience of arthouse movie fans.

Any bad? What's most annoying to me about this movie is that the actors are lacking in charisma. Yes, I do understand that they (deliberately) speak their dialogues in a monotone, unnatural way. This whole story does not make sense. As is intended. But even then, I still do NEED CREDIBLE ACTING PERFORMANCES and those are not present unfortunately.

More bad: it's lacking spark and punch half way through. It kinda implodes and becomes a tedious watch, despite it getting quite devious during the second hour.

Better watch the director's first movie which is titled:"Faults" (2014) . THAT is the movie I would really like to recommend for anybody interested in a mesmirising, mysterious, fabulous story with superb acting performances. "Faults" (2014) blew my mind!

I would like to meet writer/director Riley Stearns. His films have a very unique sense of humour about them and I would like to know if that's how he naturally is. They are very dry and quite dark. You never quite know if you're supposed to be laughing or not. I think most of the time you are.

The film begins with a very intriguing opening scene featuring a duel. At this point I was wondering if the title of the movie had been misspelled. It soon became apparent however that it had not. The film went in a very different direction to what I was expecting and I really enjoyed it.

This was a film where I had absolutely no idea how it was going to end. There were dozens of different conclusions it could have gone with. I really liked the one they picked. It was dark, thought-provoking and interesting. I really enjoyed 'Dual' and would recommend it. 8/10.