SXSW 2025 Review: REDUX REDUX, A Woman Travels Across Dimensions Exacting Brutal Revenge

A woman travels across dimensions to take repeated revenge upon the man who killed her daughter in The McManus Brothers’ SXSW Film & TV Festival selection, Redux Redux.

Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus) is a broken woman. Following the murder of her teenage daughter, she has found a way to leap cross the multiverse to avenge the death by finding and infinitely killing various versions of the man (Jeremy Holm) responsible. After thousands of iterations; burning, beheading, shooting, and on and on, she is nearing the end of her rope. None of it makes her feel any better, but the thought of this monster surviving somewhere out there propels her to her next destination.

When one of these missions leads her to save a young woman on the verge of a violent assault by her eternal quarry, Irene’s perspective momentarily shifts. Mia (Stella Marcus) attaches herself to Irene, and soon learns her secret. Mia is now determined to have her own revenge, but Irene knows that this journey never ends and is desperate to save the young girl from a never-ending lifetime of unsatisfying vengeance like the one she does not know how to escape.

After 2020’s excellent aquatic chiller, The Block Island Sound, The McManus Brothers have returned with this horror-tinged sci-fi thriller that interrogates the efficacy of revenge as a tool for healing. Spoiler: it doesn’t work. Irene’s quest only takes her further from the memory of her child, the one she is supposed to be avenging, instead turning her life into an unending miasma of grief that she doesn’t allow herself to experience.

Michaela McManus delivers an appropriately world-weary performance as Irene, a woman trapped in a cycle of her own creation. Every time she kills her prey, she simply regroups, packs up, and shuttles off to the next dimension. There is no relief, there is only the job, and McManus portrays this ennui beautifully in stark contrast to Marcus’s energetic Mia, to whom the possibility of revenge is still novel. Irene takes a reluctant motherly role in Mia’s life, hesitant to involve herself, but determined to steer her in a more productive direction. It is not a place Irene ever expected to be again, but it may be the thing that saves her life.

The McManus Brothers deliver a compelling, well realized science fiction vision to the screen with Redux Redux. Though the concept is high, the production value here is effectively modest, leaving the characters to tell the story rather than attempting to amaze with a bunch of flashing lights and computer-generated trickery. It’s a smart tactic that will reward smart viewers with a experience that will inspire conversation about the film’s ideas and performances over glitz and glamour.

Though similar to last year’s Fantasia selection Penalty Loop – a Japanese film with a similar starting point – Redux Redux is still a fairly unique film with big ideas in mind. The fact that the filmmakers and modest cast are able to effectively articulate their argument regarding the futility of revenge as a healing salve is impressive. It’s been a big year for science fiction at SXSW, and Redux Redux is one of the more successful film in delivering its thesis in an entertaining and engrossing way. I definitely expect to hear more about this one as it travels the festival circuit and hopefully finds a home with a supportive distributor.