Director – Dan Bush, Screenplay – Dan Bush & Conal Byrne, Producers – Linda Burns, Dan Bush, Conal Byrne, Clay Floren Alexander A. Motlagh & Aimee Shieh, Photography – Joe Swindall, Music – Ben Lovett, Visual Effects – Itaki Design Studio, Production Design – Jessee Clarkson & Sally Rowe. Production Company – Floren Shieh Productions/The Pop Films Movie Company/Psychopia Pictures.
Cast
Conal Byrne (William Zero/William One/William Two), Amy Seimetz (Jules Braxton Blakely), Lake Roberts (Baxter), Tim Habeger (Dr. Archer), Scott Poythress (Lester), Melissa McBride (Dr. Bronson), Adam Fristoe (Tom Langley), AJ Bowen (Mr. Bragg), Grayson Clonz (Kevin Age 6)
Plot
William Blakely comes around with no memory. He is tended by his twin brother who helps nurse him back to health. He tells William how he was injured in a crash into a tree during which he also ran over his son Kevin. William’s wife Jules has left him. In looking over the photos and films of Jules, William begins to rediscover feelings for her. What he is not aware is that what he thinks he his twin brother is the real William, a geneticist with the Next Corporation. William has stolen samples from the lab and used these to create a clone of himself. The clone now makes William a prisoner and takes his identity as he determines to reunite with Jules. At the same time, corporation security is nosing around, certain that William stole the samples.
The Reconstruction of William Zero was the first solo directorial film from Dan Bush. Bush first appeared as one of the co-directors of The Signal (2007) and FightFuckPray (2009). Subsequent to this, Bush stayed in genre material to make The Vault (2017) and The Dark Red (2018). More recently, he has been writing/directing podcast series.
There have been a variety of films on cloning themes ranging from the smart and clever likes of The Boys from Brazil (1978), Never Let Me Go (2010), Womb (2010), Elizabeth Harvest (2018), LX 2048 (2020) and the tv series Orphan Black (2013-7) – for a more detailed listing see Films About Clones and Cloning. There have been several of these that have a similar plot to the one we have here where a man makes the sudden Conceptual Breakthrough to discover that he is a clone with The Clones (1973) and The 6th Day (2000) to They Cloned Tyrone (2023), although The Reconstruction of William Zero gives its surprise away the outset, even in the publicity.
Conal Byrne (also the film’s co-writer/co-producer) and clone
Dan Bush creates a modest low key film. It is mostly shot in suburban homes, some scenes in a laboratory and a few Georgia street scenes. In the roles of the assorted versions of William is Conal Byrne, who is also the film’s writer and has been a script collaborator with Dan Bush on all of his films since FightFuckPray, who gives a decent performance here. He and Bush achieve a Dead Ringers (1988)-like effect of having Byrne walk around and converse with his other selves in a flawless way that you simply accept that it is two different characters on screen as opposed to start looking for how the visual effects trickery was achieved. (A visual effects company is credited but it is not at all clear where there efforts were employed).
The Reconstruction of William Zero is a film that keeps moving via a strong central performance(s). It would be nothing without a story that takes full benefit of structural intrigue to create an unfolding mystery about what is going on, even as you aware at the outset of the main surprise that it has. It all works in its low key way to achieve quite modest effect.
