‘Redux Redux’ movie review: Muscular, dimension-hopping revenge thriller keeps indie sci-fi in fighting shape

Kevin and Matthew McManus return with Redux Redux, their third feature after Funeral Kings and The Block Island Sound, and the film immediately makes itself seen with the kind of stripped-down charisma that indie science fiction often promises yet rarely sustains. Their sister Michaela McManus anchors the film as Irene Kelly, a mother who has spent years crossing parallel universes to track down Neville, the man who kidnapped and murdered her daughter Anna. The premise carries the propulsion of a revenge thriller while suggesting a deeper investigation. In that sense the film aligns with a recent run of high-concept indie science fiction such as Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, or Max Barbakow’s Palm Springs, and even Andrew Patterson’s The Vast of Night, that situate their speculative premises in intimate character studies and tightly controlled storytelling.

The opening minutes establish the film’s rhythm with brutal efficiency. Irene calmly watches a bound man burn alive, her expression drained of triumph as the title card appears in the background. The film soon reveals that this execution represents only one stop in a routine she has repeated hundreds or possibly thousands of times. A steel coffin-shaped machine allows her to jump between realities where Neville exists in slightly altered forms, though mostly working at a local diner as a cook. In each, Irene usually follows him to his creepy suburban house, killing him in procedural variations that offer little catharsis. The opener finishes up with a ferocious car chase that establishes Irene’s physicality before settling into a pattern of surveillance, violence, and escape that gradually reveals the hollowness of her mission.

The McManus brothers ground their multiverse in an almost stubborn realism that keeps the film tactile even as its premise veers into conjecture. Each new timeline looks nearly identical to the last, with small adjustments that ripple through Irene’s plans, like a coffee mug shifting colour, or a waitress remembering a conversation differently. This approach transforms the multiverse from spectacle into a pressure chamber of Groundhog Day-style narrative looping. Alan Gwizdowski’s widescreen cinematography lingers on diners, roadside motels, and half-lit parking lots of the Los Angeles outskirts, while Paul Koch’s charged synth score pushes forward with a steady pulse.

The story finds a welcome jolt of electricity when Irene stumbles upon Mia, a teenage runaway who was scheduled to become Neville’s next grisly project. Stella Marcus plays her with the brittle defiance that comes from too many foster homes and far too little patience for authority, and the film promptly shifts gears once Irene acquires an unwilling passenger who refuses to sit quietly in the passenger seat of a multiverse revenge tour. What follows gradually assumes the shape of a road movie as the pair hop across timelines while dodging the police, opportunistic criminals, and the general inconvenience of existing in places where Irene has already murdered someone. Their itinerary includes various shady detours and feature conversations about survival unfolding between bursts of sudden violence. One sequence plays like a hard-boiled crime thriller when Irene negotiates with smugglers over the fuel core that keeps her coffin-shaped dimension hopper running. Another slides toward uneasy family drama as she explains, with the exhausted clarity of someone who has done the math too many times, how many Nevilles she has already buried across the multiverse. The writing navigates these tonal pivots with a steady hand, though hovering over all of it is a streak of macabre humour that renders Irene’s endless revenge loop with a grim irony.

A still from ‘Redux Redux’
| Photo Credit:
Mothership Motion Pictures

Underneath the genre play is some commentary on how violence turns ritualised in the absense of outlets for grief to process itself. Irene continues killing Neville because each new universe carries the faint hope that Anna might still be alive somewhere, yet every failure pushes her deeper into a routine that strips the act of revenge of meaning. Mia disrupts that cycle through sheer presence. She represents a life Irene can still protect, which transforms the mission from punishment into responsibility. Their bond develops through shared trauma rather than any saccharine sentimentality, and the film allows that connection to evolve organically. The climactic sequence involving a lake, a bear trap, and Neville’s final confrontation forces both characters to confront the cost of remaining inside this cycle.

Redux Redux offers up a refreshing sense of proportion within the rapidly crowding field of multiverse storytelling. The McManus brothers show little interest in the spectacle arms race or the continuity gymnastics that have turned large studio franchises into tangled flowcharts, treating the multiverse instead as a narrative device for examining a single emotional wound. The approach echoes the intimacy that powered Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, where cosmic possibilities ultimately circled back to the fragile relationships at the story’s centre. The McManus brothers reach a similar insight through sheer grit rather than any absurd maximalism because infinite realities hold limited appeal when the people inhabiting them remain stubbornly uninteresting.

Redux Redux premieres at the Red Lorry Film Festival that will be held from 13 to 15 March 2026 in Mumbai