Movies by Riley Stearns

Riley Stearns is an American filmmaker who has carved out a singular, darkly comedic niche in modern independent cinema. With a deadpan, minimalist style and a keen eye for the absurdities of human behavior, Stearns crafts offbeat character studies that often veer into the realm of the uncanny. Stearns burst onto the scene with his 2014 debut, Faults, a deliciously weird psychological thriller about a deprogrammer tasked with extracting a woman from the grip of a sinister cult. This early work showcased Stearns' talent for building tense, claustrophobic narratives around deeply flawed, idiosyncratic protagonists. He followed it up in 2019 with his breakout film, The Art of Self-Defense, a jet-black satire that uses the trappings of a martial arts movie to explore themes of masculinity, isolation, and the seductive lure of toxic ideologies. Stearns' most recent offering, 2022's Dual, may be his most ambitious and unsettling film to date. A speculative fiction tale about a woman who must duel her own clone, Dual exemplifies the director's fascination with the disquieting spaces between comedy and tragedy, reality and the surreal. Throughout his filmography, Stearns has displayed a unique cinematic voice, crafting strange, compelling worlds that force viewers to confront the darkest aspects of the human condition.