Although you could easily argue that it’s been around for a very long time, multiverse horror – if we can now call it that – is immensely popular right now. As I have said elsewhere, it seems to be of especial interest to indie horror and fantasy filmmakers, for whom it affords tantalising possibilities, divesting old narrative certainties of their power whilst lining up new ideas. It may also be a deep-seated desire to skip out of this particular timeline, come to think of it. particularly during and since Covid. The McManus brothers – directors of 2020’s The Block Island Sound – have recently completed on Redux Redux (2025), making their own second horror feature a multiverse horror. In doing so, they have blended the more philosophical approach (of, say, Synchronic, or Infinitum) with the more visceral – using the chance to hop in and out of different timelines to inflict grisly violence, over and over again. It’s an ambitious project, albeit that some of its plot elements take considerable strain across its 107 minute runtime. However, by virtue of its strong production values, aesthetic values, performances and script, it avoids the kind of prevaricating which, at worst, indie cinema of this kind does.
We start with some of the strong aesthetics mentioned above, as well as the grisly violence: a woman looks on as a man – tied to a chair – burns to death in agony at her feet. One quick edit later, and the same woman is fighting for her life at the hands of the same man, at least momentarily, before she gains the upper hand. She dispatches him in a different way this time, but with the same, merciless brutality. The woman in question is called Irene (Michaela McManus), and the film pauses to catch its breath for a moment, offering up a few visual symbols as she explains to the man that she is ‘searching for Anna’ – her daughter. The numbered locks of hair in his possession suggest a serial killer; Irene is a grieving mother, then, using the affordances of multiverse travel to murder her daughter’s killer, again and again, as she searches for a timeline in which Anna is still alive.
There is a certain amount of anxiety as the film loops, and loops, and loops during its first twenty minutes or so – some disorientation. As these sequences unfold, different coloured mugs are used to spell out for us that Irene is stopping off at the same diner, chatting to the same waitress, but in different realities. Her daughter’s killer happens to work in this diner, so she can reliably stop off for a coffee before – well, her approach varies, but he dies every time. Sometimes she shoots him then and there. Sometimes she follows him home. Sometimes – actually, quite a lot of the time – her zeal for murdering Neville (Jeremy Holm) gets her into dangerous situations, such as the pursuit which we see in one particular timeline as she unloads on Neville just as a police officer walks into the diner. But in this case, she makes it back to a residential address, where she clambers into some kind of pod and – she’s gone. Then she’s back – sort of.
On reflection, it’s probably for the best that Redux Redux doesn’t spend an undue amount of time and effort on explaining the precise mechanisms of its multiverse travel, as much as it very carefully and steadily expands some aspects of this as the film progresses. The pod itself looks pure sci-fi – almost Giger-ish – but the film as a whole could easily have got bogged down in science fiction, a potentially hazardous place to be for any scriptwriting team, so despite the fact that a few questions (for me) linger over the narrative come the end, these wouldn’t necessarily be rectified or improved by more jargon (and nor is quantum theory particularly easy to grasp at the best of times). It’s enough to know that Irene has been driven close to madness by her rage, and has happened upon a novel way of working through this – or, perhaps not. She comes from a timeline where this kind of travel is possible, and that’s more or less that.
Things change, however, when – during another visit to another Neville – she interrupts him with a still-living victim in his bathroom. It’s not Anna. This young woman, Mia (Stella Marcus), is a feisty, streetwise kid who has a lot of baggage of her own and, when Irene releases her, she wants in on the murder plot against the guy who kidnapped her, a guy who, in this particular timeline, has just dodged Irene’s bullets and escaped.
The film switches perspective for a while here, picking up more of Mia’s story before looking at the at-first unwitting relationship which springs up between her and Irene. A kind of folie-a-deux even kicks in for a while, with each character bouncing off the other in terms of their unreasonable decision-making and risk-taking. But these are strong characters, well written and acted, with a script which is just the right amount of self-reflective. There are inevitably some puzzling additions: Redux Redux‘s seemingly endless vengeance loops – though pleasingly bloody and messy – sometimes border on inexplicable (surely you’d pick your battles carefully and wait, or jump, rather than potentially killing innocent people, or getting yourself killed in a particular timeline?). However, the interaction between Irene and Mia grows more engaging, turning the film into something else and fleshing out the film’s final act – which is particularly important, given the pure horror which comes to dominate there, and what it could signify.
Redux Redux is certainly ambitious and manages to weave together a compelling tale of grief, family and redemption with only a few rogue moments. There is indisputably tension, drama and world-building. Along the way, the film looks great: rich, crisp colouration, good use of light and dark, with a blend of moody interiors and modern Americana. It’s interesting, by the by, that the diner also plays such an important part in another recent multiverse indie, Things Will Be Different (2024) – it’s obviously the liminal space of choice, familiar but alien. I retain nagging doubts overall about the multiverse thing, but there’s certainly enough skill and nous here to hold things together, and the McManus brothers are without doubt skilled filmmakers, whose horror output so far has been eminently worthwhile.
Redux Redux received its premiere at SXSW on March 8th 2025.