Finding a genuinely good movie can sometimes feel like a quest of its own. After scrolling through what seemed like an endless number of choices, I recently stumbled across Redux Redux, a new science-fiction thriller that held my attention until the final scene.
The film follows Irene, a woman whose daughter was murdered. Armed with the ability to travel through alternate realities, Irene repeatedly hunts down and kills the man responsible. But there is one brutal catch: No matter how many versions of the murderer she eliminates, he continues to exist in other timelines. More importantly, Irene still cannot reach the reality she desperately wants — the one in which her daughter is alive.
Along the way, she meets Mia, a wayward teenage girl who has her own reason for wanting revenge against the killer. I won’t reveal much more about the plot, because the film is best experienced without knowing where their journey will lead. Their evolving relationship, however, gives the story an emotional center that elevates it beyond a conventional tale of time travel and vengeance.
Michaela McManus is excellent as Irene, creating a character who is both fierce and wounded. Irene moves through each reality with a mission of determination, but McManus never lets us forget that grief — not simply anger — is the driving force. Beneath her hardened exterior is a mother who cannot accept that, despite possessing extraordinary power, she remains powerless to undo the moment that destroyed her life.
Stella Marcus, who plays Mia, also has undeniable star quality. She possesses what I think of as a “Spielberg quality” — that rare ability some young actors have to make audiences connect with them almost immediately. Marcus brings much-needed humor and warmth to the film, but she is equally effective in its darker dramatic moments. I expect we will see much more from her in the future.
If you enjoy stories about time travel, parallel realities and the multiverse, Redux Redux is worth watching. It is probably the most entertaining film of its kind that I have seen since Triangle (2009) and Coherence (2019). It also has a little of The Terminator (1984) in its relentless movement, ominous atmosphere and collision of science fiction with human survival.
The result is an unusual combination of science fiction, thriller, adventure and horror. Yet its most powerful element is not its violence or its journey through alternate worlds. It is the emotional question beneath them: What happens when a person is given the power to go anywhere except back to the life she lost?
Irene can cross into an infinite number of realities and kill an infinite number of versions of the man who murdered her daughter. What she cannot do is prevent it from happening. Her journey suggests that revenge can become its own kind of time loop — one that keeps us endlessly revisiting the worst moment of our lives while convincing us that one more act might finally change the ending.
Perhaps that is the film’s deepest and most unsettling idea: We may dream of changing the tragedies and difficulties of the past, but healing begins only when we stop traveling back in time and decide what to do with our present and future. We can also take what we’ve learned from the past, and use it to help others.
