‘Redux Redux’ Review: Low-Budget Sci-Fi Finds Heart in an Endless Cycle of Revenge

Made independently on a low budget by three siblings—two directors and an actress—Redux Redux is the kind of pleasant surprise that occasionally pops up on streaming platforms with little fanfare, the sort of discovery that justifies their existence. The third feature by brothers Matthew McManus and Kevin McManus (whose earlier films include the little-seen Funeral Kings from 2012 and The Block Island Sound, from 2020 and available on Netflix) blends crime, drama, and science fiction to tell the story of a mother who dedicates her life to avenging the man who murdered her daughter. And that’s where the science-fiction part of the story comes in.

The setup goes something like this. Irene—played by Michaela McManus, the third sibling who appears in all their films—is that mother. When the movie begins, we see her kill Neville (Jeremy Holm), the man responsible for her daughter’s death. Soon afterward, as if the story were starting over—or perhaps flashing back, though at first it’s hard to tell—we see her run into him again at the diner where he works as a cook and kill him in a different way. Later, when Irene meets a man (Jim Cummings), invites him to a bar while already knowing exactly what he’ll order, sleeps with him in a car, and calmly explains the situation while he stares back in disbelief, things finally begin to make sense.

Strictly speaking, Irene isn’t a time traveler. She’s a traveler between universes. Drawing on the multiverse idea—that millions of parallel worlds exist simultaneously—she can’t go back in time to stop her daughter’s murder. Instead, after the tragedy, she moves from one universe to another, hunting down Neville again and again. She never stops. It’s the only purpose left in her life. How does she do it? With the help of a bulky contraption that looks like a cross between a coffin and a refrigerator. She climbs inside, the machine jolts violently, and she vanishes from one reality only to land in roughly the same place in another version of the world. In truth, aside from minor variations, most of these universes look remarkably alike. And in each one her mission is clear and specific, even if occasionally she runs into complications with the police or other inconvenient obstacles.

Built around a cycle of killing, revenge, and repetition, the film is carefully and intelligently structured, largely ignoring the technicalities of quantum mechanics to focus instead on its central character and her motivations. The key turning point arrives when, in one of these alternate worlds, Irene encounters Neville while he’s trying to kill another girl—a runaway teenager—and manages to save her. From that moment on, the film shifts its focus to their relationship. Mia (Stella Marcus) is an intense fifteen-year-old who quickly drags Irene into a series of new problems, yet the two gradually form a connection. It’s not hard to guess what the girl represents to Irene, and her presence begins to shake the grim routine that has come to define the woman’s increasingly dehumanized existence.

The film still has more than a few surprises in store, but the McManus brothers don’t rely on twists alone. Their intentions are clear: to gradually bring together these two solitary, combative characters and see whether a genuine human bond can emerge, pulling them away from the drives that seem to rule their lives—violent vengeance in Irene’s case, more familiar teenage rebellion in Mia’s. Some of their misadventures work better than others, but for the most part Redux Redux flows along knowing that the real story lies in that relationship. In that sense, it plays almost like a lo-fi version of Terminator 2: Judgment Day or other science-fiction stories built around the uneasy bond between adults and teenagers.

Along the way there’s a science-fiction gadget that works a bit like the DeLorean time machine in Back to the Future or whatever propels the characters across universes in Everything Everywhere All at Once: what matters isn’t so much how it works as why. For Irene, it represents a kind of existential loop, an inability to break free from the trauma that has kept her trapped for years, unable to move forward with her life. Additional elements gradually fill out the portrait of the character, but the real strength lies in McManus’s performance. She gives Irene an intriguing mix of aggression, violence, tension, and a slowly emerging empathy, as if the character might still have time to salvage what remains of her life—whether in this universe or in one of the many others that, some say, exist alongside it.