FANTASIA25 REVIEW: Redux Redux [2026]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 107 minutes
Release Date: 2026 (USA)
Studio: Saban Films
Director(s): Kevin McManus & Matthew McManus
Writer(s): Kevin McManus & Matthew McManus

She’s been dead in all of them.

It doesn’t matter where Irene (Michaela McManus) got the metal, coffin-like device that allows her to travel between parallel worlds across the multiverse. Because rather than concern itself with the machine’s origins or technological significance (although writers/directors Kevin and Matthew McManus, Michaela’s brothers, do eventually supply a bit more lore to add another layer to the plot’s suspense and stakes), Redux Redux concerns itself solely with reason Irene has been using it for longer than she can remember. This is a grieving mother who lost her only child to a brutal act of violence. A woman who’s made it her life’s mission to confront the culprit, inquire about her daughter’s body’s whereabouts, and kill him without a shred of remorse in every single dimension that exists.

We meet her standing against the title as Neville (Jeremy Holm) burns to death while tied to a chair on the ground. We watch as she barely escapes his chokehold to smash his head beneath a bed frame. There are gunshots. Throat slashes. Suffocations. Irene never fails in this mission because she knows everything there is to know about this monster from where he works, when he gets paid, where he lives, and the places he goes to hide. It’s been thousands of worlds over multiple years and there’s no sign of quitting. Not when he roughs her up in the lead-up to taking his last breath. Not when the police arrive to ignite a race against time back to where she’s left the machine for a quick escape. Irene is a literal Terminator ensuring that her figurative John Connor never hurts another girl again.

When you do something for this long, however, an unavoidable alteration is bound to occur. The hope is that it takes the form of a dimension where her daughter wasn’t murdered, but it’s beginning to look like that ship has sailed. Every Neville that Irene finds still has a lock of her Anna’s hair inside his trophy box and, since she isn’t traveling through time, more bodies will inevitably pile up in those worlds where he remains alive and active. Anna was #11. We see a lock labeled #12. So, Irene will eventually find that box with a #13 since the multiverse is infinite and she’ll never reach an end to her journey. What she couldn’t have expected is finding that victim while she’s still breathing.

The machine is therefore the hook. Revenge is the purpose. And fifteen-year-old Mia (Stella Marcus) is the chance at redemption. That’s why we meet Irene now and why this chapter in her story is the one worth telling. Because she’s long since forsaken her humanity. Beyond a pattern of finding Jonathan (Jim Cummings)—a man she can rely on in every universe—to provide companionship when needed, there’s zero interaction with anyone but the people in a position to point her towards Neville. Not even Mia can shake her from that apathy. Sure, Irene is glad she was able to save her, but that’s as far as it goes. She still has a man to kill and a trip to take so she can do it all again. But what if she could stop?

It’s the perfect match: a mother without a child and a child without a parent. Both have given up on the prospect of love. Both resent the world for dealing them the worst hand it possibly could. And it’s not like Irene is looking to replace Anna—far from it. Nor is Mia desperate for a mother. This is more about seeing themselves in the other than it is someone to fill a void. It’s Irene seeing the lost and angry soul that ultimately set her on these train tracks to oblivion and Mia seeing the strong, badass woman her own surly attitude craves to become. That’s why the former doesn’t want to ruin the latter by taking her along and why the latter wants nothing more than to follow the former to enact her own vengeance.

Except, of course, that’s not quite the truth. They might be inured to their current, dismal lots in life, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t both jump at the opportunity to jump off if it was safe. It all comes down to trust, though. Trust in each other to think their support could make it possible. Trust in themselves to even believe they deserved a second chance. Because they have each relied only on themselves for as long as they can remember. Mia has been in the foster system since she was four and it’s not difficult to imagine Irene’s been killing Neville for a decade too. That’s a lot of time, resentment, and mistrust to expunge. So, they’ll ultimately do whatever they can to push the other away first instead.

As such, despite the science fiction premise and pulpy violence, this is first and foremost a character study. It’s McManus and Marcus providing authentically complex performances that refuse to shy from the survival instincts they’ve grown comfortable relying upon—impulses that render everyone around them expendable and this new partnership instantly disposable if pressed against a wall of the other’s (or their own) making. Add some great points of support and conflict (via Dendrie Taylor, Ely Henry, and Taylor Misiak) that can’t help but end in fireworks and a formidable Holm as the forever-dying-but-never-gone target of their ire and it’s impossible not to invest in their shared journey to reclaim the vulnerability necessary to allow themselves the room to love again.