62
Metascore
25 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 86Paste MagazineJacob OllerPaste MagazineJacob OllerIf you’re blessed with matching taste, where you’ll put up with a bunch of over-literal, stiff-backed oddballs dealing with a clone crisis, you’ll find a rewarding and gut-busting film that’s lingering ideas are nearly as strong as its humorous, thoughtful construction.
- 83IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichDual adds a fresh sprinkle of doom to the already savage deadpan of Stearns’ previous work, and bitterly crystallizes the existential anxieties that have crushed down on so many of us with new weight since the pandemic started. That it also allows Karen Gillan to give two hilarious performances, both colder than death but at distinctly different temperatures, is just icing on the cake.
- 80SlashfilmBen PearsonSlashfilmBen PearsonRuthless, deeply cynical, and thrumming with jet-black humor, Dual is a Riley Stearns movie through and through.
- 80VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeDual is in fact a fairly astute comedy. The laughs come not from jokes so much as sharp jabs of truth — wince-inducing insights into the subjects most movies won’t touch, like our fear of death, intimacy and being forgotten.
- 80IGNSiddhant AdlakhaIGNSiddhant AdlakhaWriter-director Riley Stearns transforms depression and disappointment into a hilarious confrontation of death and a peculiar tale of self-image in an uncanny film with a precisely bizarre lead performance.
- 75ConsequenceClint WorthingtonConsequenceClint WorthingtonThe results are deliciously off-kilter, even if the sci-fi world Stearns has created is somewhat clumsily reverse-engineered to make his central premise possible.
- Karen Gillan is the main selling point of the latest film from Riley Stearns (The Art of Self-Defence) – an odd mix of deadpan satire and high concept sci-fi that some may find off-putting – so it’s handy for him that she offers not one but two intense and stripped-back performances.
- 63Slant MagazineMark HansonSlant MagazineMark HansonRiley Stearns’s film consistently tickles the funny bone, even when it comes at the expense of psychological nuance.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeThe Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeStearns’ third feature (following Faults and The Art of Self-Defense) is his least satisfying so far; as visually drab as its predecessors, it has more difficulty mining its off-kilter aesthetic for nervous laughter and conceptual provocation.
- 42The PlaylistRodrigo PerezThe PlaylistRodrigo PerezBoth Stearns and Gillan commit to the detached tenor. Still, it’s often more distant and isolating than it is funny, therefore leading to a movie that feels misjudged and far too remote, even for those well-versed and conversant in this weirdly lopsided style.