Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Written and Directed by Matthew and Kevin McManus
In Redux Redux, a vengeful mother engages in a multiverse-hopping vendetta to exact justice on a serial killer who murdered her daughter. She hopes that in one of the alternate universes, she will find a world where her daughter is still alive. An interesting take, if a bit over-extended, on the causality loop of fate.
The looping dynamic of reconstructing past events is not new to horror. Whether Happy Death Day, Loki, or Final Destination, exploring the butterfly effect of satisfying the need to set the world right is a cool trope to examine. With Redux Redux, it isn’t explicitly a time jump, but a dimensional jump that is used. Irene is from a world where, somehow, there are coffin-like devices that can transport you to another dimension, where the world is very similar but slightly different, allowing her to try and reconstruct events. However, she is limited to returning to the same calendar date, which doesn’t give her much time to set things right. There is always hope.
Cast of Redux Redux
- Michaela McManus plays Irene Kelly, a vengeful mother seeking the redemption of her murdered daughter.
- Jeremy Holm is Nelson, the serial killer in many multiverses who has killed Irene’s daughter, Anna.
- Stella Marcus portrays Mia, a sassy runaway girl rescued from Nelson in one of the universes that Irene travels to.
- Jim Cummings plays a man whom Irene meets at grief counseling and develops multiple temporary romances with.
A Short Synopsis of Redux Redux
We join Redux Redux in media res. Irene is on a killing rampage, only it is a rampage only involving one man, Nelson, the sadistic killer of Anna, her daughter. She shoots, stabs, suffocates, and burns this dude alive. Irene follows the same path each time. She goes to a diner, confirms that Nelson is working there, and then proceeds to sneak into his house, looting Nelson’s cache where he keeps tokens of his victims. Then, she waits for him in ambush. She has the advantage of surprise in every encounter, but he is a big powerful man, and it isn’t always easy.
This most recent run was a little sloppy however, as she attacks Nelson when he is in the diner, drawing attention to the police and she flees to her Tardis-coffin multiverse hopping device and disappears in a concussive blast, appearing in the same location, in a different reality. She has been doing this hundreds of times, and she has yet to find a world where her daughter is still alive, so she has been exacting vengeance and then moving on to the next alternate world.
On her next trip, she is surprised to find a captured victim in Nelson’s house. Mia is a young runaway, and Irene rescues her, though Nelson manages to escape this time. Irene takes Mia to a police station where she can take shelter, but Mia has smuggled Irene’s pistol and sneaks off instead. Mia hitches a ride with a matronly trucker, trying to track down Nelson to kill him herself, but Irene catches up with her and decides to take her under her wing.
Irene doesn’t want Mia to fall into the path of killing she has embarked upon, but Mia is an impetuous youth with a rebellious streak. This volatile relationship adds complications that Irene hasn’t had to manage before and threatens to derail her mission. All it takes is one mistake, one mistimed move, and it could be game over for both of them.
Evaluation
Redux Redux boasts a fun twist on the cheating fate trope, and Michaela McManus’s performance is excellent. She has become a practiced assassin, with only one target, repeated many times. Therein lies part of the struggle for causal loop plots. The loop needs to repeat itself enough times to establish the pattern, but not so many times that it becomes redundant. Redux Redux extends itself a bit too far, and the second act drags a bit as a result.
Michaela, sister of the directors Matthew and Kevin (a handsome lot, they are), is a joy to watch. She is expressive yet hardened, gaunt from the effort, but steely. McManus hits all the right empathic notes at the key emotional climactic moment. She carries this movie on her back with aplomb.
Mia is a bit harder to attach to. Yes, she’s a tough runaway, but the inner snarky teen spirit can be a bit grating. The character requires her to be a challenge for Irene, but there are many times where the character crosses over the line to the point where you want to throw your hands up in frustration. Still, you root for the pair. Jeremy Holm is a great foil. He’s a brooding, hulking man, but he is usually completely unaware that the hunter has become the hunted.
The action scenes are full of bravado and fantastic pacing. The opening act plays like roller-skating with rocket boots. It’s a fun ride. Unfortunately, the middle of the movie gets caught in the rinse cycle maybe one pass too many, and I don’t know that some of the side plots in this movie pay off well. The bit with Irene’s affair and an exposition dump about how the multiverse machine works interrupt the movie’s narrative flow.
Concluding Thoughts
Redux Redux is a good watch. Its plot has a satisfying main thread, and the buddy road trip through a “time” machine is compelling. I particularly like the revenge murder montage scenes showing her assassination craft. Extremely satisfying! The McManus brothers are transitioning from the world of long-form narrative television into feature films, showing much promise here. Their TV tendencies may have encouraged them to pack as much into this film as possible. Some belt-tightening in the editing room would allow the strong points of this film to shine brighter.
Keep a watchful eye out for Michaela McManus in the future. She also has plenty of TV credentials; with this movie, she proved she could carry a feature film.
Redux Redux debuted at SXSW, and I caught a screening at the Overlook Film Festival. They do not have a distributing partner yet, so it is yet to be determined if or when a wide release issuance will happen. The MPAA has not assigned a rating to the film yet, though this would be a Hard R rating for the amount of violence and gore throughout the movie.