Redux Redux (Matthew McGrath, Kevin McGrath, 2026), currently available on VOD, is one of my favourite kinds of movies, this being an original, tightly scripted, indie genre-exercise along the lines of, say, Primer, Coherence, Man Finds Tape, Timecrimes, Another Earth, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, and River.

Here’s the basic premise: A woman travels through the multiverse, hopping from parallel universe to parallel universe, repeatedly killing the man who’s kidnapped and murdered her daughter.

The success of this movie is due to a number of smart decisions. First off, it begins in medias res, with the very compelling image of an impassive woman standing beside a burning man who’s tied to a chair that’s tipped over and lying on the ground.

Second off, the McGrath Brothers (who wrote and directed) do not then proceed to pull a J. J. Abrams by doubling-back on the narrative to fully explain how we got to where we are. Instead, it’s assumed that the audience is intelligent and that we’ve been exposed to similar plot elements previously, so rather than spoon-feeding us info, we’re expected to catch up to the story that just keeps barrelling forward. Case in point, there’s an exchange part way through where the relentless protagonist (played Michaela McGrath, the brothers’ sister) is explaining what she’s doing, but her exposition dump is cut short when the other character she’s talking to says, on behalf of both herself and us, “Yeah, I know what the multiverse is.”

Third off, every wide-screen shot is perfectly composed and orchestrated. You can tell there’s thought behind every creative decision. Part of this is, I suspect, for practical purposes. By eschewing any unnecessary coverage, the filmmakers are able to maximize their modest budget. The other part is simply because these guys obviously know exactly what story they want to tell, and, more importantly, they know exactly how they want to tell it.