Perhaps it’s the general obsession with optimising every aspect of life that’s driven the glut of time-loop thrillers in recent years, with the likes of Predestination, Looper and Edge of Tomorrow et al. The McManus brothers’ Redux Redux is a decently handled example from the low-budget end. It traps a bereaved mother and a bratty tearaway in a Sisyphean revenge cycle, playing like an intimate version of Terminator where the credibility of 12-step grief recovery, rather than the future of humanity, is what’s at stake.
Actually, Redux Redux is technically a multiverse film. Hailing from the only universe where multiverse travel has become possible, Irene (played by the directors’ sister Michaela McManus) uses what looks like a banged-up gas boiler to skip between different timelines. But there is one constant: she always ends up murdering Neville (Jeremy Holm), the short-order cook and child-killer who abducted her daughter. She hopes to find the one multiverse where her daughter is still alive. Instead, on her umpteenth payback, she interrupts Neville with 15-year-old Mia (Stella Marcus) cable-tied in his backroom.
