‘Redux Redux’: The McManus Brothers Craft A Perfect Multiverse Revenge Horror Story [SXSW 2025 Review]
Move over superheroes, because there’s a new take on the multiverse in town and it’s ready to make you cry! The latest from Kevin and Matthew McManus, Redux Redux, reimagines the multiverse into a lo-fi revenge story where technology fuels a woman’s burning hatred. While the bones of the film feel familiar, the McManus Brothers ultimately craft a fascinating and unique multiverse exploration all about vengeance and grief that spans infinite timelines.
Irene (Michaela McManus) is a woman on a mission, and has been for quite some time. She’s traversing the multiverse to kill the man (Jeremy Holm) who kidnapped and murdered her daughter over and over again. Thanks to a special machine, Irene travels through every universe she can, searching for one where her daughter survives and isn’t senselessly slaughtered. But mostly, she’s on an endless journey through time and space with the sole intention of murdering the man who ruined her life. Whether by bullet, plastic bag, fire, or knife, Irene has killed a version of this man more times than she can count. And she shows no sign of slowing down.
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Then, in one universe, she finds one of his victims alive: Mia (Stella Marcus), a 15-year-old runaway with no family. She quickly rescues the girl, only to have him escape. Thus begins a tentative but warm relationship between two broken people trying to fix themselves. Irene promises to kill the man, but not with Mia’s help. Mia begs to do it. It’s not an uncommon struggle in revenge stories. But the difference here is the world of this particular story, and a script that prioritizes creating a new world rather an occupying one we’ve seen before.
The McManus Brothers go the smart route and decide to let the technology speak for itself rather than trying to explain how it was discovered and why. They keep it simple, with small moments of brief context that don’t function as exposition dumps, but rather as small moments of detailed world-building that make the story feel more grounded and also bigger in scale. It’s the best kind of sci-fi: subdued but fascinating, fundamentally changing the world as we know it but not in the ways you’d expect.
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But more than a piece of indie science fiction, Redux Redux is a meditation on revenge taken to the extreme, where revenge isn’t just a single act, but rather a neverending, vicious, self-perpetuated cycle. It’s the personification of your deepest, angriest thoughts towards a person who wronged you that plays on a reel in your head at your darkest moments. Irene gets to live out that so-called fantasy, just at the expense of her humanity and any lasting human relationships. There are the expected speeches about the futility of revenge, but they aren’t overwrought, and within this context, they feel genuine rather than beats to hit in the typical revenge story.
The film does suffer from the issue that most avenging angel films—or films where someone is getting revenge on behalf of another—suffer from, which is almost forgetting the victim in the name of building up the avenging angel herself. There are moments that touch on this as Irene explains the monster she’s become in the name of saving her daughter, but it’s a small missing piece of the puzzle that would have been the cherry on top of a fantastic film. That doesn’t mean there needed to be information about her violent death, but rather a more in-depth look at Irene’s relationship with her. It’s a small detail that by no means derails the film’s story, but would rather just strengthen it.
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McManus and Marcus are a stellar pseudo-mother-daughter duo who bicker through the desert, driving a moving van with a multiverse-jumping machine tied down in the back. McManus embodies Irene as a stone-cold killer who isn’t afraid to show her soft side. She’s kind and empathetic, but also stern and rigid, a maternal figure hardened by years of murder. Marcus is a ball of chaos that epitomizes a frustrating teenager, but then again, can you blame her? Between life in foster care and narrowly escaping the clutches of a serial killer, Mia is trying to clutch to something stable and real, just like Irene. They are two unmoored individuals floating through the multiverse, searching for love and family wherever it may be.
With Redux Redux, the McManus Brothers prove they’re the next Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, with their eye for unique genre stories with deeply human (and often broken) characters at their core. Just as Everything Everywhere All At Once proved the power of the multiverse concept in more indie settings, Redux Redux illustrates the infinite possibilities in indie horror, even when crafting infinite universes. It’s treading some familiar ground, but doing so in a special kind of way that shatters your heart while bending your mind with sci-fi elements sprinkled in for flavor. I could watch Irene and Mia traverse the multiverse, killing child murderers for days. So grab those tissues and get ready to witness some cold-blooded revenge in one of my favorites of this year’s festival.
Redux Redux had its world premiere at SXSW 2025.
Summary
Redux Redux treads some familiar ground, but does so in a special kind of way that shatters your heart while bending your mind.
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