Redux Redux

Traveling through the multiverse in a strange device, a mother hunts down and murders her daughter's killer in each new universe, again and again, but her quest for vengeance is slowly wearing away at her soul.

Redux Redux premiered at South by Southwest in 2025.

The movie stars Michaela McManus, a veteran working actress with a long history of trudging through various medium-sized roles in the dregs of network television police procedurals and teen dramas. She is the sister of the film’s writer, director, and main producer team, Kevin and Matthew McManus. This is actually their third collaboration together, but the first one that Michaela has starred in. Redux Redux is also the first film from their new independent production studio, Mothership Motion Pictures.

All of this would normally be... pretty suspect, and most likely pretty sad too, at least, taken at face value, if not for the fact that Redux Redux actually turned out to be a pretty good movie.

The film starts with a woman out in the darkened desert, watching impassively as a man, tied to a chair, screams while he burns.

Then, that same woman is locked in a struggle with a man, rolling around in a house somewhere else, a man who she then kills. Panting, she finds his secret box beneath his bed, and opening it, she finds a dozen locks of hair inside, each one numbered. She clutches #12 and cries.

Then, that same woman, looking rough and beat-up, is sitting at the counter in a diner, having coffee from a yellow mug, and watching as the man she just killed, the line cook at the diner, is watching a table of teenage girls. The waitress seems surprised when the woman knows her name. Later, the woman follows the line cook home after he gets off work. She has the key to his house somehow, so she sneaks in and ambushes him as he sleeps. With a gun to his face, she demands to know where “her” body is. #12. Anna. She was 14 years old. But she gets no answer from the man, so she kills him, but it doesn’t happen in the same way that we had just seen her kill him, it’s different this time. Again, she gets the box from beneath his bed, and she clutches the lock of hair marked #12 to her chest as she cries. But then she hears sirens approaching, so she grabs the line cook’s cash and runs.

Then, the same woman in the same diner again, at the same counter, with the same waitress, but this time she’s drinking coffee from a red mug. The waitress doesn't seem to recognize her. The woman is surprised to see that a different man is cooking. She asks about the man she’s looking for, Neville, but the waitress is called away before she can answer. A bus boy refills the woman's coffee, and she is shocked to see that it’s Neville, right there, right next to her. She shoots him dead in the middle of the diner, to the shock of all the diner patrons. She is nearly killed herself when a random cop happens to walk in, and she's forced to run as more cops arrive. She tears across the city in a stolen Penske truck—taken after hurriedly going through an envelope full of key fobs that she somehow had in her backpack—and manages to make it into a dingy motel room just ahead of the horde of cops and screaming sirens on her tail.

Inside that motel room is a strange metal high-tech coffin-like box. She quickly gets in side, closes the lid, and her face lit by the glow of electronics, she punches a quick succession of buttons. Outside, the cops are preparing to breech the room, but the door is suddenly blown off the hinges, knocking them all on their asses. As the dust settles, the confused cops find that the woman is gone, the room is empty, the carpet is scorched, and everything inside is blown into disarray.

The high-tech coffin suddenly appears in the same motel room, one that isn’t in disarray. There’s no cops anywhere. It turns out, this woman has been traveling through hundreds and hundreds of parallel worlds, for years now, each world very much the same, with only minute differences.

Her name is Irene Kelly.

She only ever kills Neville on Thursdays, because he gets paid on Thursday, and she needs the cash. If it’s not Thursday, Irene will go to the same support group for people dealing with their grief over losing a family member, and there, she strikes up a conversation with the same guy in each universe, using details that she knows about him in order to hook up. Afterwards, she sometimes confesses the truth to him. Otherwise she’s all alone, haunting the same spots, killing the same guy over and over, staying in hotels, or sometimes squatting in that universes’ version of her abandoned home, where her daughter’s height growth is still marked on the doorframe and the shadows are heavy with sadness.

Irene is looking for one universe where her daughter is still alive, a plan that is obviously not very well thought out, and is fraught with potential problems, but has so far never found one, so she just kills Neville in each new universe. She is clearly spiraling here. She is clearly lost, and is clearly unable to walk away from her vengeance quest, because that would mean having to face some very painful truths, a reality that does not seem to have worked out too well for seemingly every other universe’s version of herself. So, she just keeps killing the guy who did it, over and over again, and then moving on to the next world, still hunting.

But in this new world, when Irene goes to the same diner, with the same waitress, to sit as the same counter, to drink the same coffee, but this time from a blue mug, she discovers that Neville has called in sick. And when she then goes to his house to take care of business, she is surprised to find that there is a new victim chained up there, a 15 year old girl named Mia.

And that’s when things start to change…

Redux Redux has a great basic premise, is generally well-executed and well-written, has good characters and performances, some pretty good action, and some really great world-building, all while doing a really good job at communicating its strange rules and backstory.

In short… it’s a good time at the movies.

With echoes of The Terminator franchise, Rian Johnson’s Looper, and Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin, amongst others, Redux Redux multiverse hook is used as a really nice metaphor for the spiral of grief and loss and the repetition-compulsion of trauma, as the repetitive nature of Irene’s multiversal quest for vengeance eats away at her. It’s only when she sees that Mia is standing on the edge of the same ledge, that she is forced to confront the pile of her own issues. The amount of time that Irene has spent avoiding having to face this truth is really nicely revealed too, when partway through the story, her machine’s battery is drained, and they have to enter a kind of Multiversal Traveler Underground. Other multiversal travelers are shocked to hear that she has this issue, as it implies a crazy amount of “miles” she’s put on the machine, and that she’s been hopping universes for quite some time. All the background details and explanations are all very cleverly explained within the fabric of the story and the actors' performances. It's good stuff. In the end, Redux Redux is mostly about finally allowing yourself to let go of grief, to begin to heal, to move on, to break the spiral, and ultimately, mothers and daughters and found families and the ties that bind, as the two main characters end up saving each other, literally and metaphorically.

It’s an all-around well done film, especially when it’s such an obviously low budget one. It's all very clear and straight-forward and well-done. It's not reinventing any wheels or anything, but it's fun and clever and exciting.

Of course, there are those out there who might be looking for deeper sci-fi lore, who might want to know how exactly the machine works, or how Irene knows how to operate it, or basically any stuff like, the type of people who generally prefers to be spoonfed like the ugliest baby bird in existence, and those people are going to end up pretty disappointed, as the film mostly doesn’t bother. But in my opinion, this is the best possible choice the film could make. As I mentioned, this is clearly a low budget sci-fi film. It uses very minimal practical effects, and many of the same locations in and around Los Angeles, and to me, when a small budget film centers on such a high sci-fi concept, that’s smart filmmaking. Too many of these smaller budget sci-fi films fail simply because their eyes are too big for their stomach, and do not possess the kind of resources they need to realize their dream, so they are just incapable of delivering the wonders that the script promises, and the way that this is such a fucking fail is that apparently no one in the production possesed the self-awareness required to see this, or the guts to admit it, which would've save the project from the garbage heap, so as a result of their lack of talent, lack of insight, lack of resources, lack of awareness, lack of creativity and problem-solving ability, lack of basically... everything that an artist needs to succeed, those projects end up looking terrible and ultimately fall apart.

Not here, though. Not with Redux Redux. Here, the film takes those budgetary limitations and it turns them into strengths. I love that. It gives the film the feel of a large scale setting while focusing on smaller stakes, and allows it to tell its story without stumbling over its own shoes simply because the CGI looks like shit.

So, yeah, very well done.

But, as I said, some folks won’t like that, and so you will hear them demanding more info-dumps of lore and explanation, as if the lack of this is not only a failing on the film’s part, but also as if they're actually even needed, because they're not. And the worst is, often upon closer examination, you'll find that these people are actually lying, and for some reason, are not willing or capable of saying "I don't like this. It's not my cup of tea," and instead drum up a ridiculous “objective” reason for why the film is "bad." These people are stupid and wrong, just like the people who claim that this film “skips providing details” and that includes the ones who say this as a compliment. Because the information really is there, you just have to watch the fucking movie, which is something a surprisingly large amount of people refuse to do, despite having chosen to turn the film on themselves. Even worse, some of these fucking FOMO-enslaved weirdos watch these things at 2x the speed. It's so fucking weird! Why bother? Just go do something else, you clearly want to go do something else... go do it!

Anyway...

But yes, it's true, we don’t know how exactly Irene got her Multiverse-traveling box, or how exactly she knows how to work it, or to fix it, but what we do know is that her universe discovered multiversal travel, and from everyone’s attitude about it, it’s as common there as having a car is here. We also know that the machines seem to be precise, which makes sense, as it is able to target specific universes and to travel back to specific ones the operator has already visited. I honestly kind of hate when people refer to the napkin conversation in Looper, as if its a truism that should be applied across board, but here it's true... You don't need the specifics, dummy. Now, obviously, I like the way they keep things vague here. This won't be true for everyone, and that's fine. But me? I like the way the film, and the characters in the know, all approach multiversal travel in a way similar to how a person from a society with cars really wouldn’t bother to explain the inner workings of a car to someone who’s never seen one before because, who cares, it’s fine, it’s just a car. Get in. Shut up. Don't touch the gas pedal, dummy. But still, some people might say: “Oh sure, so this world just lets people travel the multiverse like we do freeways? Isn’t that dangerous? Or irresponsible? Wouldn’t there be some kind of regulation, or some kind of policing of it?” How the fuck would I know? Also, who cares, because it’s not important to this specific story.

Also, shut up, dummy.

Besides, the most unbelievable thing in this movie isn't the multiversal travel, it's how quickly cops arrive after a single gunshot or two. They have a response time in this film of like... 30 seconds. This is just pure fucking fiction. I mean, I will buy the one random cop happening to stroll into the diner right at the wrong moment, because sitting on their ass and cramming their piggy faces while scrolling on their phones is really the only thing police officers seem to do, but the rest? All of them roaring up with sirens blaring? In literal seconds? What, was there a minority that needed to be killed for the crime of unlocking their own car or something? Maybe for carrying gorceries while walking? Or perhaps for standing on a public street and doing nothing? Not that I could see. So yeah, that shit is complete nonsense.

But... I'll allow it.

After all, this is a fictional story, so I won't harp on this clearly unrealistic detail, no matter how much it might strain my ability to suspend my disbelief.

Also, just as an fyi, as I’ve complained about this before, it’s okay that one character ends up in the trunk here, as the car is an old mustang, and therefore it is from a time before trunks all had interior latches. And yes, it's true, sometimes the dialogue lands a little awkwardly and is a little try-hard, but mostly, it’s fine. And okay, fine, one of the characters does walk away from a bear trap injury in a way that is almost as completely unbelievable as the idea of police arriving quickly in the event of a crime. And yes, the ending is more symbolic than it makes actual sense if you think about it too much, but still, for an ending, it's also fine.

So, besides a few little things like that… it’s a pretty good film. It looks good too. The film’s opening shot in particular is a stunner.

Also, despite all the trauma and damage they go through, at the same time, I like how the film never waivers from the idea that killing Nevilles across the multiverse was actually a good thing, a net positive, and that, despite being about how revenge is ultimately hollow, and won't undo tragedies, the film doesn't try to paint Irene as bad in any way when it comes to killing Neville, holding strong throughout the film that he deserved it, that it saved lives, and the world is better off without him. I loved that, especially as most films would shy away from that truth.

Also, my own personal little bugaboo, I really appreciated the way that Irene manages to always hold onto her backpack throughout her travels, at least for the most part. I hate when the hero has their carefully packed things that they need, and then the story makes them drop it. Hate that! They don't do that here, and I appreciated it.

So yeah… thumbs up. I really liked this one. Check it out.