EIFF 2025 Review: Redux Redux – “An absolutely excellent slice of action-SF, with an emotional core.”

Directed by Kevin and Matthew McManus
Starring Michaela McManus, Stella Marcus, Jeremy Holm, Jim Cummings, Taylor Misiak, Dendrie Taylor

Redux Redux begins as it intends to mostly go on – powerfully. A woman dispatching a man tied to a fallen chair in the desert, by burning him alive. The same woman in a desperate, hand-to-hand struggle with the same man in a wretched-looking shack of a home, until she finally gets the upper hand and dispatches him again, violently, shooting him through a mattress. In between, we see her searching a small box the man has hidden, finding a lock of hair with the number “12” on it. These are the trophies of a serial killer.

We soon realise the woman, Irene (Michaela McManus) is not only hunting this serial killer, Neville (Jeremy Holm) to take brutal revenge, she is killing multiple Nevilles across parallel dimensions. Neville abducted, tortured and killed her daughter, and she has never even managed to have the tiny bit of closure that at least finding a body would do. “Where is she?!” she screams at one Neville, before blowing his brains out all over a wall. This is a woman on a mission, powered by raw grief and rage.

Between each killing and the subsequent escape to the steel coffin-like box that transports her to the next dimension, we slowly get more of Irene’s history. She’s been doing this for quite a while, and each universe is very similar, so certain points bring her back time and again. Not just the obvious target of her rage, Neville – and after so many times, she now knows his patterns, making him much easier to track and kill – but her former family home, abandoned in most realities, nobody wanting to buy a home steeped in such tragedy (not only the loss of her daughter, but other versions of Irene later ended their own lives). In some ways the anger and retribution, along with a diminishing desire to find a reality where she and her child are safe and happy (after so many trips, she has never yet found one), are what keep this Irene going, while the others ended their lives.

Up till now you might be thinking nice idea, little bit Terminator / Sarah Connor, perhaps, but then she finds something new when hunting another Neville: Mia (Stella Marcus). Another victim of Neville, she finds her in his lair and rescues her while taking care of this Neville. A kid who has been in and out of care homes – sadly with little actual care – and was caught by Neville while running away from her latest place, she is distrustful, wary, and combative with Irene, but you already know there’s going to be something developing there.

And yes, you can feel that coming, but here that’s no bad thing, because you want to see these two grow closer together. When Mia goes from disbelief to seeing proof of Irene’s dimensional travelling, she decides she too wants revenge on Neville for nearly killing her (and all the other hers across different worlds), but an almost broken Irene tells her no, how even though this hunt keeps her going, it has taken all her humanity from her. The loving parent has disappeared under a vengeful woman with no mercy, committing brutal death after death after death, with no end in sight.

Mia’s arrival signals the start of a disruption to this seemingly endless pattern Irene has trapped herself in, unable to stop or walk away, but hating herself for it. It also ups the emotional level – the smaller glimpses into the magnitude of what was done to make her this way are replaced by a much deeper emotional awareness growing. Along the way we also get some exceptionally fine and tense action scenes – sneaking at night into the decrepit hovel Neville lives in is reminiscent of Clarice in Buffalo Bill’s basement, while other sequences are straight-out action, with multiple cops chasing Irene.

Yes, there are a few moments where you can guess which direction this is taking. Still, when it does it is actually normally satisfying, the growing emotional aspect draws you in (McManus and Marcus, in her first feature role, really sell the damaged souls slowly finding something more). At the same time, the tense and action filled scenes give you some serious spectacle too. An absolutely excellent slice of action-SF, with an emotional core.