By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Now available on digital platforms from Saban Films and DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, REDUX REDUX is a tense and engrossing genre-blender with a killer hook. Michaela McManus stars as Irene Kelly, who uses some found technology to jump through alternate universes to avenge the death of her daughter at the hands of serial killer Neville (Jeremy Holm). RUE MORGUE spoke to both actors, along with writer/directors Kevin and Matthew McManus (who also discuss the film here), following the movie’s Canadian premiere at last summer’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
Michaela McManus previously starred in her brothers’ horror film THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND and has numerous TV credits, while Holm has become a recognizable presence in independent fright fare, including THE RANGER, BLACKOUT, HERD and BROOKLYN 45. The duo enact a tense and unique game of cat and mouse in REDUX REDUX, with Irene joined on her multidimensional journey by teenager Mia (newcomer Stella Marcus), who becomes both a humorous and emotional foil for Irene, helping her hold onto her humanity as she continues on her deadly quest.
Michaela, since REDUX REDUX was written with you in mind, what were your reactions when you first read the screenplay?
MICHAELA McMANUS: I loved Irene, but I was really scared of this entire script. Which I think is the best feeling as an actor, because you know you’re going to be challenged. It was intimidating; I’d never had the opportunity to play a character like this, to do the stuntwork, to work with all the firearms. I’d never had any experience doing that, so I went to a gun range with my brothers a week before filming to kind of wrap my head around it. And then on top of that, to play not only this vengeance-driven kind of action hero, but also the vulnerable, heartbroken and just broken sides of that character.
It was a very challenging process for me. I read the script I don’t know how many times—it was basically disintegrating in my hands by the end of filming—but I will say that having my brothers leading the charge was a huge help, because we already had that relationship and had established that trust. And I’d worked with Jeremy before; we got to do a scene in THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND. We worked together for just one day, but it was kind of an instant connection, so that trust was there for our scenes in REDUX REDUX. That’s key to any performance: allowing yourself to finally let go and really settle into the character.
I’m assuming REDUX REDUX was shot out of sequence, and Irene goes through a number of different universes over the course of the movie, so how did you deal with keeping track of where you were in the story as you were shooting?
MICHAELA: Every time I work on a project, I create a bible for it, because we’re usually shooting out of sequence. For every scene, I’ll do a one-line summary, and then I highlight it when I’m done shooting it. And every time before I’m shooting, I go back through the bible. This one was very intense, because we were going through all these different universes but Irene is really on a straight journey; she’s not jumping back and forth in the way that some of the other characters are. This is the only version of Irene throughout. So that little bible helped me. It was definitely challenging, but having the right people to help me through those moments and bring me back to where I needed to be for each scene definitely helped.
Neville doesn’t have that kind of transformation in the film, but he does go through different guises, so Jeremy, can you talk about how you approached that?
JEREMY HOLM: For me, in this film, it was really about servicing what happens to Irene and to her daughter, and what the brothers wanted from that piece of the machine. I’m not saying he’s a machine, but that was my role: to fit in that part and fill out that portion of the world—that guy who works in the diner, the guy who plans on abducting people. The questions were, how quickly could I make an impact, how real could it be and how twisted and weird could he seem but still be grounded? I knew with these guys and Michaela, it wasn’t going to be hyper, it was going to be real, so that was what I focused on.
I was also focused on how this guy carries himself in the world. What does thinking about those awful things all the time do to you? All day at work, you’re doing your job, but you’re thinking about this body you’ve got at home and what you’re going to do to it. Like, have you ever spent four hours thinking about stuff like that? It does weird things to your psyche, but it also affects your body, so that’s how I approached it.
And then, reading the script, because I knew it wasn’t going to be done in order—and indeed, we shot the ending first—I had to know all the things that have gone on, although for Neville, it’s only a few things because it’s a different day, right? But I had to know all that stuff; it had to be clocked, including physical stuff like the wound, for continuity. There was a continuity department, but the actor has to track it as well, to be sure there aren’t any mistakes. So reading the script a lot was essential to understanding the whole thing.
Can you talk about working with the makeup effects?
MICHAELA: Well, on day one, we tried to establish the bruising. We did the cut you see on Irene’s forehead, and then the bruising on the cheekbones, and then my hands always had cuts and scrapes and were dirtied up. That was the bulk of it; I think for practical reasons, we didn’t ever want to take it too far, because like you said, we were shooting out of sequence, and it was an indie movie so we were shooting on a very tight timeline, and things were changing day to day. So it had to be believable that this woman gets beat up a lot, and really fights, but nothing too severe—until the end, when…well, I don’t want to give it away.
MATTHEW McMANUS: There’s a moment in the movie, it’s the first scene we shot with Michaela, and she had her makeup done and we were like, “Yeah, this looks pretty good.” The bruise was just big, and dark, and afterward we said, “Maybe we should tone it down.” It just screams out to me whenever I watch the movie; I’m like, “Wow, that bruise got really bad in that scene!”
HOLM: We had a great makeup guy named Hugo [Villasenor], who’s done a ton of stuff. He’s really good at rigs, and the little tubes hidden under a patch he puts on you that can ooze blood. And he loves it; it’s the best thing in the world when he can make a big gush of blood come out and spread in the right way. For him, it’s like he’s curating an orchid, man; it’s a thing of beauty. So we had a lot of fun.
KEVIN McMANUS: Hugo Villasenor is like a Zen master of makeup. We were so lucky he was available; he was the makeup artist on BONE TOMAHAWK, so we knew we had a guy with real chops. And because we had a guy like that at our disposal, we started wondering, “How much can we take advantage of this?” We had Jeremy for an extra day, the one when we were doing all the car-driving stuff, and we decided, if we can get Jeremy in his room, all day long, Hugo can do whatever he wants to him.
So Matt and I flipped a coin for who was going to shoot all the car stuff and who was going to get to be in the kill room all day, and I won the coin toss. I got to kill Jeremy over and over again, and it was such a lovely day, because the two of them would go off, and Hugo, very soft-spoken, would say, “I think we can cut his throat in the next one.” And he’d run off and put a beautiful prosthetic on Jeremy, and they’d come back and we’d slit his throat and blood would be everywhere, and they’d clean it up and run off and come back with some other gnarly thing. It was delightful as a day can be on a horror-film set.
HOLM: My shower ran red for weeks! It was great.
Can you talk about Stella Marcus, who makes her film debut in REDUX REDUX?
KEVIN: She was an absolute dynamo, and so much fun. We held traditional auditions to find her, and Mia was a difficult part to play. It required a lot of range. She had to be funny, but also hurt, with the defense mechanism of having a tough exterior but actually being vulnerable on the inside, and that’s not easy. Most actors would play it a bit tougher and with a little more contempt, and we wanted someone who could bring a sense of levity to it as well. Stella, to her core, is such a fun-loving person, and brought so much joy to the character. Once she realized she could have fun with it, a light bulb went off, and suddenly she just jumped off the screen. We had so much fun with her the whole time.
MICHAELA: I would second everything Kevin said. She’s super-talented, and she’s just beginning. I think she has an amazing career ahead of her. And beyond the humor she adds to the film, she also had this calming, wise presence on set. One day when I was sort of spiraling and having a tricky time, she swept right in and gave me the encouragement I needed to settle right back into the character so we could shoot the scene. I just love her to death; she’s a gift for anybody to have on their project.
Jeremy, you had to get very physical with her in certain scenes, so how did the two of you handle that?
HOLM: Well, the two things I was probably most nervous about were that I didn’t want to hurt this beautiful human being who’s [the directors’] sister, and also, I am a big guy, and they’re small, but very strong people. And she’s young, so I was on top of her and we were very close together, and…I have daughters, and even with them, sometimes I’ll do this [raises a hand] and they’ll shrink away. So I was very mindful of being authentically Neville, but also not hurting anyone or making anyone uncomfortable. And I didn’t have to worry about it, because she was tough as nails; she was like, “No, you can go harder.” She was up for it, and she did a great job.
