Redux Redux retools the high concept of Edge of Tomorrow, but instead of Tom Cruise being endlessly regenerated as an ever better fighting machine, it’s Michaela McManus as an endlessly vengeful mother repeatedly killing the man who killed her daughter, and visiting all the trillions of parallel universes to do so.
Actually, Irene is hoping to find her daughter still alive and in the rude health in one of them. When she doesn’t, killing the man who stole her daughter’s life acts as consolation. It also means she gets to hone her slaughtering skills – tying the perp to a chair and setting fire to him in one universe, shooting him in another, shooting and stabbing him in a third, and on it goes.
We know all the back story because in one of the alternaverses she meets a dude in a bar and has a few drinks with him before having sex with him in his car, where all the details come out as Irene’s clothes come off. The guy is played by Jim Cummings, a signifier of where we all in the filmic ecosystem – this is a low-budget but ingeniously crafted film, much as his are. Don’t get too excited, Cummings fans, he’s here and then he’s gone.
The perp, Neville, is played by Jeremy Holm, and in one of the alternaverses Irene meets Mia (Stella Marcus), one of Neville’s victims, a wiseass kid who was brought up in a foster home until Neville abducted her.
Michaela M you might know from a double handful of outings in TV shows One Tree Hill and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. She’s also appeared in her twin brothers’ earlier features, 2012’s Funeral Kings and 2020’s The Block Island Sound. Given that she is the writer/directors’ sister, it’s surprising that once Mia arrives on the scene the focus shifts from McManus’s character to Marcus’s. Their early scenes together are slightly awkward, as if Michaela M doesn’t want to let go, but once Marcus has the spotlight she blossoms in it.
At the same time as this shift, the high concept also seems to switch from Edge of Tomorrow to The Terminator, more specifically the “happy family” middle section, where Sarah Connor is on the run with Kyle Reese (the future father of saviour John Connor). Things get slightly domestic and meander a touch. There’s a relationship for Mia with a lesbian truck driver that feels like a bit of “something… something… something here…” plot vamping.
And then suddenly the shooting starts again and the original concept returns in full force. Yes, parallel universes and all that.
Actually, there is a lot of The Terminator in here more generally. Thematically similarities, an emotional core that gives it dramatic traction, plus camera moves and a shooting style by cinematographer Alan Gwizdowski that stir memories. The urgent, rhythmic score by Paul Koch also seems to have drunk from the Cameron well. This film is much more verbose, though, and a bit more “I’ll be back” terseness wouldn’t have gone amiss.
There is a special place in heaven for movies that are made on a low budget when that is a lunatic thing to do. Sci-fi costs money and when there isn’t any it takes a particular mindset to know which corner to cut – Irene’s alternaverse-travelling craft looks like a silver fridge-freezer lying on its side probably because it is.
But though Redux Redux is an odd mix of the very good, the questionable and the missed opportunity, overall the McManuses pull it off. Thanks to ingenuity, determination and a star-is-born turn by Marcus, whose feature debut this is in a career that has thus far lasted precisely one year. She’ll be back.
Redux Redux – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
