Movie Review: Dual

credit: Dual

This is certainly a different movie considering everything that Karen Gillan has acted in over the years, but it’s interesting enough to take a look and wonder what kind of moral implications would arise if cloning was a legal way to keep a person around and negate the pain of losing them. When Sarah is diagnosed with a terminal illness after finding a large puddle of blood on her bed, she debates whether or not she should initiate the cloning process and ends up doing it. The option is the best since she doesn’t plan on following the advice of physicians, given that they tell her to stop drinking and start exercising. While she does end up starting the latter, she doesn’t quit the former quite as easily. But when it’s discovered that her illness is in remission, Sarah decides to decommission the clone, only to find that her double has ended up bonding with her boyfriend and her mother. Since Sarah has been distancing herself from both of them before the movie starts, as is explained, they come to like the clone better and thus create a serious rift between themselves and the original, who has to move out of her place that she shares with her boyfriend, and stops speaking to her mother entirely. 

credit: Dual

The movie begins with a scene starring Theo James as he takes on his own clone. 

The duel to the death that is a part of this movie and part of the law between a clone and the original is shown in the opening credits as Theo James and his double have to fight to survive as a table is set up in front of each of them, laden with weapons. When the double kills the original, it becomes law that the double is deemed the one with the legal rights. This feels a bit barbaric, to be certain, but there is a brutal sense of logic to it since trying to think that both could survive in the same world while living different lives is possible, but for some people, that might be an untenable situation since it could bring up a lot of difficulties that people wouldn’t want to deal with. Plus, the fact that a person would know that there’s someone out there with their exact DNA would be a point of constant anxiety for some that couldn’t be allowed. 

The moral implications for this type of thing are mind-boggling in a number of ways. 

Cloning human beings brings up a lot of issues that people have been talking about for a while, but bringing a clone to life to help family members avoid the painful loss isn’t exactly a positive since this indicates that people could be brought back no matter if they died naturally or if they died before their time. It would get kind of difficult to determine who would have the power to initiate such a thing at times, and there would be moral implications of trying to cheat death by keeping DNA on hand to bring people back to life anytime someone felt the need. This almost has the feel of The 6th Day with Arnold Schwarzenegger but without a majority of the action. 

credit: Dual

Being kicked out by your own family is a painful thought. 

The revelation that Sarah’s clone has been in contact with her mother and with her boyfriend is hard to take since it means that everything she taught her clone and forbade her to do was completely disregarded in favor of taking Sarah’s place early on. The fact that she went into remission wasn’t even an impediment to her boyfriend and mother accepting the clone once they learned that she would be sticking around. Even worse, she still had to make the payments to the cloning program since she couldn’t afford it initially and was expecting to be dead and gone during the majority of the payments. But upon realizing that she would live, Sarah not only had to move out and leave her loved ones behind, but she also had to keep paying for the woman that they had come to love more than her. 

One point that’s made is that every living organism will do as it must to survive. 

After making it appear as though she would flee with Sarah to avoid the duel, the clone ends up poisoning Sarah’s water and leaving her body in the woods as she arrives late to the duel late and claims to be the real Sarah. The thing is, Sarah’s mother and her boyfriend know that she’s the clone, and they say nothing. What’s amusing after this, in a twisted sort of way, is that eventually, the clone starts to act like Sarah more and more and eventually has a breakdown in the middle of a roundabout as cars go racing around her.