I always find the key to a great indie sci-fi film isn’t in the number of details you include, but in what you don’t include. Audiences are smart. If you give them the basic premise and good characters, they’ll follow you, quite literally, to the ends of the earth. “Redux Redux” possesses that confidence, opening on a woman apathetically watching a man who’s tied to a chair and burning to death. We soon discover that this woman travels between parallel universes in a steel box no bigger than a telephone booth to punish the man who kidnapped and murdered her daughter. There is very little we discover afterwards.
We do, of course, learn this avenger’s name: It’s Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus). We also learn about her routine. She always visits the diner at which Neville (a vicious Jeremy Holm), her daughter’s killer, works. Sometimes she shoots him on the spot; in other versions, she follows him home, opens a wooden box under Neville’s bed containing locks of hair, a roll of cash, and a gun whose handle is wrapped in tape, and then viciously murders him.
The additional details we do receive aren’t necessarily about the science of Irene’s travels. Where did she get this machine? How does it operate? How many others have similar devices? It doesn’t matter. Instead, the McManus brothers—Kevin and Matthew—whose sister plays Irene, take greater care illuminating their film’s mysterious characters.
In the worlds they’ve created, everything is relatively the same with only minor variations from timelines to timeline. If a coffee mug at the diner is yellow in one universe, it’s red in another. Irene also inspires change by periodically hooking up with Jonathan (Jim Cummings), a guy she sweet talks over and over again with the same pick-up line outside of a grief supporting meeting. Apart from those wrinkles, Irene lives a brutal cycle of cold-blooded justice and coital relations that has progressively rendered as hollow as her machine. This is a woman who crashes at the abandoned, similarly emptied out house left by her other self, where her daughter’s past height growth is marked on a doorframe. McManus provides further details about Irene through her visceral performance, which balances a kind of emotional distance via her firm yet exhausted frame along with a piercing intensity delivered by her urgent eyes. Watching her, particularly as Paul Koch’s synth score pulsates underneath the film’s many forlorn scenes, you feel as though you’re seeing a long trek toward self-annihilation whose devastating end is well within sight.
Her certain conclusion is irrevocably altered when she enters a universe whose seemingly minor change is drastic. Upon entering Neville’s home, she discovers a 15-year-old Mia (Stella Marcus) tied-up and in need of help. She springs Mia, who, despite her smart aleck attitude, becomes a second daughter to Irene. It’s difficult to play a know-it-all teenager without it feeling forced, but Marcus, for the most part, does it with aplomb. Though in the more emotional scenes, one can often feel Marcus trying to translate her expressions of emotions with a tad too much effort, she and MacManus do find a rhythm together that’s akin to Sarah and John Connor in “Terminator 2.” They imbue life into the film’s second half, which somewhat struggles to include action-packed excursions that attempt to build out the film’s sci-fi elements.
The film’s sci-fi tone holds best, not when the McManus brothers try to explain the technological components, but when these characters’ find solace in their shared trauma. As they look within themselves to parse the grief for a life nearly lost and a life that seemingly can’t be recovered, the film reveals itself to be elegantly conceived: from the seamless editing that burns boundaries between realities and the grounded cinematography that takes great pleasure immersing viewers in cozy diners, bright fast food joints, and sparse roadside sites.
“Redux Redux” barrels toward its conclusion but never feels rushed. The McManus brothers don’t make the mistake of trying to deliver last-second answers or even clear catharsis. They leave their film ambiguous enough that one shouldn’t question what they’re not seeing or the comfort they end up feeling.
