A grieving mother traverses multiple parallel realities, executing her
daughter's killer in each one.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Kevin McManus, Matthew McManus
Starring: Michaela McManus, Stella Marcus, Jeremy
Holm, Jim Cummings, Grace Van Dien
In recent years Hollywood has embraced the sci-fi concept of the
multiverse, largely as a cynical way to bring back fan favourite
characters from the dead. Movies based around protagonists traversing
parallel universes too often use the idea as a little more than an excuse
to throw a lot of weird shit up on screen with neither rhyme nor reason,
and the experience of watching such stories can be headache-inducing (I'm
looking at you Everything Everywhere All at Once). Written and directed by brothers Kevin and Matthew McManus, Redux Redux might be the most rewarding use of the multiverse concept to date.
The McManus brothers have taken this idea and given it a Groundhog Day-esque spin, focussing not on how wildly different each alternate reality
is, but how similar they really are.
This similarity proves frustrating for the film's heroine, Irene (Michaela McManus, sister of the writer/directors). Originating from a technologically
advanced version of our world where coffin-like contraptions allow people
to travel back and forth between parallel realities, Irene has dedicated
her life to traversing alternate timelines in the hopes that she'll find
one where her 14-year-old daughter wasn't murdered. After thousands of
attempts, Irene is met with the same misery in every world she visits, but
before she moves on to the next one she executes Neville (Jeremy Holm), the serial killer responsible for her little girl's death.
Irene seems to have resigned herself to never finding a world where her
daughter is alive, and is kept going mostly by the goal of wiping out
every version of Neville she can find. So single-mindedly vengeful is
Irene that she doesn't seem to have contemplated the idea that there might
be a reality where Neville isn't a killer, or perhaps at this point she's
given up on the thought of such a possibility. Irene's routine consists of
stalking Neville at the diner where he works as a short order cook before
following him home and ending his life. Early on we see a montage of
Irene's various executions, which range from burning Neville alive in a
remote desert location to simply putting a bullet in his head in the
diner. Occasions like the latter see her make mad dashes back to her
multiverse-machine before the cops can catch her. After each execution of
Neville, Irene consoles herself by spending the night with Jonathan (Jim Cummings), a widower she originally met at a grief
counselling session, but whom she now quickly seduces with a pick-up
technique she's rehearsed thousands of times.
Irene's routine is disrupted by Mia (Stella Marcus), a 15-year-old runaway she discovers in
Neville's home. Thrown off by Mia's appearance, Irene fails to kill
Neville, who flees into the night. Unwilling to go to the cops or return
to her foster home, Mia convinces Irene to allow her to tag along, but
things get messy when a violent confrontation with Neville and the
police forces Irene and Mia to escape to another reality.
The McManus brothers have crafted a sci-fi thriller that delivers all
the wild thrills and action of an '80s b-movie while exploring the
concepts of multiverses and revenge in a manner that provides
philosophical food for thought. They've created a world that might
rely on flaky science but which we fully buy into. The plot moves at
such a rapid pace that we don't get time to ask questions regarding
how any of this is possible, and the movie has smart answers for most
of the queries we might have. Each new revelation serves to deepen the drama rather than complicate
it. This is top notch sci-fi storytelling that treats its audience
with respect and never feels the need to over-explain its concepts. In
many ways it plays like a reverse Terminator, with Irene's Sarah Connors the one crossing dimensions to take out
Neville's T-00 substitute.
As Irene and Mia, McManus and Marcus have that classic
bickering/bonding chemistry that fuelled so many great '80s romps, and
it's refreshing to see a surrogate mother/daughter relationship take
centre stage in a sci-fi movie rather than the usual romantic dynamic.
In Mia, Irene begins to see a new hope, but Mia's determination to take
out the version of Neville that abducted her sees her in danger of
becoming consumed with the hatred that has eaten away at Irene for so
long. McManus's performance impressively sells both the movie's heady
sci-fi themes and its message about the effects of substituting grief
with vengeance. Redux Redux suggests that revenge leaves the avenger cold, regardless of
which reality it plays out in.
