Redux Redux (2026) and the Violent Nature of Motherhood

There have always been stories, real or not, about mothers doing impossible tasks on behalf of their children. There’s one circulating on the Internet for decades about a mother lifting a car with her bare hands long enough for her neighbors to come and save her child trapped underneath. 

Redux Redux is a story just like that. This Science Fiction/horror feature film from the McManus brothers depicts a consumed-by-rage woman traveling from universe to universe to avenge the death of her daughter by brutally killing her murderer over and over again. And that’s all that she does. Her life stopped the moment her daughter was killed, and vengeance became her only reason to live. That is, until she travels into a universe where she finds that the killer has already abducted his next victim, a young girl similar in age to her daughter when she died, and her path takes a different turn suddenly. 

The fact that the main character, Irene, never talks about her husband and the father of her daughter shows that motherhood is a singular, personal experience that only women who have given birth and/or raised a child can understand. Coming from the only universe that has discovered interdimensional travel, she is the embodiment of every single grieving mother that has ever existed. In all the other universes she goes to, every version of her has died from the sorrow and pain of losing her only child. This power she has to jump from one dimension to another to satisfy her bloodlust is the only thing that keeps her alive. In one of the last universes we see her travel to, she saves his next victim, removes her from her timeline, and motherhood starts to gain a different meaning for her. The vengeful determination that kept her going shifts to a more protective one, giving her a new reason to live. But protecting a child has its layers of violence, too, and the final concluding act portrays exactly that.

Being a character-focused, well-acted, and skillfully crafted movie, it’s not hard to empathize with Irene even when you’ve never experienced motherhood. Even when she doesn’t recognize herself anymore and questions her own nature, you understand where she’s coming from and how pain and rage can fuel a grieving mother’s existence. And I found myself admiring her and feeling sorry for her at the same time. 

Movies like this are the reason I’m more inclined to watch independent cinema. They are small in production values but big and powerful in ideas, and they tend to stick with me long after I finish watching. They raise questions that other big productions seem afraid to ask, and they try to be as original as they can in a world where everything seems to have already been done before. It’s not the first movie I’ve watched from the McManus brothers, and I’m certainly eager to see what they come up with next.