By MICHAEL GINGOLD
One of the best genre-blenders in recent years arrives this Friday as Saban Films brings REDUX REDUX to theaters. It’s the latest feature from writer/directors Kevin and Matthew McManus, who spoke to RUE MORGUE following the movie’s Canadian premiere at last summer’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
REDUX REDUX stars Michaela McManus as Irene Kelly, who’s bent on avenging the death of her daughter—over and over again. She has gotten her hands on technology that allows her to jump through parallel universes, tracking down and killing her daughter’s murderer, Neville (Jeremy Holm from THE RANGER, BROOKLYN 45 and HERD). Her quest threatens to rob her of her own humanity as well, until teenager Mia (Stella Marcus) joins her in her travels. Mixing science fiction, suspense and moments of intense horror, REDUX REDUX (reviewed in RUE MORGUE #228, now on sale) is a gripping standout from the McManuses, who previously created the moody fright film THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND.
Once you came up with the basic concept of REDUX REDUX, how did you evolve the story you wanted to tell?
KEVIN McMANUS: I think honestly, where the story goes is what finally unlocked it for us, and made us want to make this movie. I don’t want to give a lot of spoilers here, but once we realized the first-act turning point, and the introduction of a new character, we were like, “OK, that’s how this is going to lighten up, and it’s going to be more accessible.” And then there are a few big turns toward the end, and that was where we were like, “This is something special.” It’s not the same thing over and over, and there are some big twists and turns that the audience might not expect.
You’ve said you came up with this idea a number of years ago, so was it a relief when the Marvel movies popularized the idea of a multiverse, and now the mass audience gets what that’s all about?
MATTHEW McMANUS: I would say it was a relief. And then when EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE came out, it was like, “Oh, this is interesting—an action movie starring a woman and her daughter, and oh shit, are we going to be able to make our movie?” And then I saw it and was like, “Oh no–it’s also a masterpiece! Fuck, what are we going to do?” Luckily, this movie is different enough from that one. But yeah, it’s a lovely thing; audiences have been so exposed to the idea of a multiverse now that it helped us streamline our script. We could take out a lot of that exposition, a lot of that educating the viewer, and just let ’er rip, and that was definitely a huge benefit.
We just wanted to simplify it. So many multiverse stories are incredibly complicated, and we were like, “Actually, it is pretty simple. If you’ve got the machine, you can go to a parallel universe, and that universe is whatever you find it to be; it can be that kind of clean and simple.” It was exciting to be able to just execute it like that. In so many of the Marvel movies, it becomes like, what’s at stake? Well, if you destroy this MacGuffin, then all of the multiverse is destroyed, and it’s hard to connect to that. So we feel very fortunate that we took such a simple, matter-of-fact approach, and the fact that it’s working for audiences is awesome.
How did you approach incorporating the hardcore horror elements into this science-fiction scenario?
KEVIN: Ultimately, we’re so drawn to the genre of horror that it’s always where our brains go first when we’re writing anything. In this movie, it was a fun opportunity to do some pretty gory makeup effects that we’ve never had the chance to do in the past, so we wanted to lean into that anywhere we could. And I remember, when we were coming up with the ending, we wanted to make sure we were going to pack enough of a punch. We have a bunch of stunts in there where, not to give any spoilers, but Michaela went through the wringer. And there was one point where we were like, “We have to dial it up just a little bit more,” and there’s that moment [of physical damage] that came to us in the very last draft of the script. We sent it to Michaela, and as soon as she read it, she called us up and said, “Did I do something to you when we were kids to make you want to put me through all of this?” [Laughs] That’s when we knew we had probably pushed it far enough!
Fantasia’s Mitch Davis compared REDUX REDUX to THE TERMINATOR, and it is similar in the sense that it’s a ground-level thriller that has sci-fi tech in it. Was that film an inspiration?
KEVIN: The absolute North Star for this movie was the original TERMINATOR. It’s sort of our North Star for all our movies, actually [laughs]. So it was cool to have our sister play Sarah Connor, and to have a sci-fi story where the sci-fi stuff is sort of at arm’s length. What we were really making was part horror movie and part LA noir movie. There are so many pieces in there that are very much an LA crime story that we got to take advantage of, in a similar way.
On the latter tack, you found a lot of great LA locations that aren’t immediately familiar. Was that a goal for you, or just a result of the production circumstances?
MATTHEW: I think you’re always, whenever you’re making any movie, trying to give that sense of place without using the big landmarks; you want people to feel that texture. So while there’s not a big shot of the Hollywood sign or anything, we hoped to capture that Southern California feel, and that area’s desert-meets-city feel, in the same way that with THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND, we wanted to evoke that New England winter island town. We hope that comes across.
KEVIN: When you’re making an LA crime story, there are certain things that come up: You’re going to see some diners, you’re going to see some motels. At one point, we had so many diners in it that we had to start rewriting it: “Can we at least have a fast food joint instead of a diner, to help pull it back a little bit?” But yeah, it was fun to take advantage of all those landscapes and settings.
You did shoot on some locations that have been used in movies before…
KEVIN: Yeah, when you shoot in LA, one of the great pleasures is that every single place has been used in some movie, and oftentimes movies you adore. So the diner and the hotel in REDUX REDUX, the main ones we’re in most of the time, are the same ones from DRIVE, Nicolas Winding Refn’s film. That was a huge influence on us; we all went to see DRIVE at Vidiots before we started filming REDUX REDUX, and we talked to the DP [Newton Thomas Sigel] to ask him how they stole some of their car-chase scenes. And all the scenes where they’re driving through the desert, and they go through the tunnel, that is the exact same place where they shot DUEL, Soledad Canyon Road.
MATTHEW: The last place we went to was really interesting. There was this old Hollywood guy driving us on his golf cart through this huge movie ranch where they shot a bunch of Westerns back in the day. There was this swamp in the middle of it that was really spooky; you could just feel bad things had happened here. And he said, [menacingly] “You want to know what we shot here?” “Yeah, what did you shoot?” “The Budweiser frog commercial in the ’90s.” [Laughs] That was such a ridiculous moment. And there’s kind of a shot-for-shot remake of that commercial in our movie, as you see the same setpieces and the same little shed and everything.
KEVIN: If you want to kill the tension of our ending, watch the Budweiser frog commercial first. [Both laugh]
MATTHEW: One other thing to throw in: We were at one of these locations, and the guy was like, “Oh, you guys are John Carpenter fans?” “Oh yeah, man, we love John Carpenter!” “You love CHRISTINE?” “Of course!” He said, “I’ve got her in my garage.” And he opened the garage, and Christine was in there amongst about a dozen other cars, looking perfect. He was like, “You want to sit in there?” and we were like, “Yeah, dude!” [Laughs] It was so surreal, but that’s LA for you.
I noticed that the motel clerk in the movie is reading CHRISTINE…
KEVIN: Yeah, that’s exactly where that car was, in that setting. We were like, “Yeah, she has to be reading CHRISTINE.”
Can you talk about the use of humor in REDUX REDUX in general?
KEVIN: Yeah, I think it’s critical, when you’re making a suspense movie, to find opportunities to lighten it up, and give the audience a break. There are a couple of places here where that happens. Mia brings a lot of levity. There’s the sequence where she’s hitchhiking that I find so enjoyable. And London Garcia, who plays the motel clerk, was so funny. We did that one scene where she’s reading the CHRISTINE novel, and immediately said, “We have to bring her back for another day.” We added the scene of her reading the newspaper, with Michaela running by and the cop car going by; that was added after the fact, just because we enjoyed working with her. Finding opportunities to add laughs and humor and levity is always such a critical part.
Is there anything else you’d like to say about REDUX REDUX?
KEVIN: What we hope people take away from the film is that it was an opportunity to tell a personal story within the multiverse genre. The same way that THE TERMINATOR told a personal story with time travel; it’s not about a journey into fantasy lands, it’s an opportunity to take a journey into all of us. One of the reasons we like that our universes change in such small ways from one to the next is that it’s not really a movie about how universes change, it’s about how people change.
There’s this great quote [from Heraclitus] that we think about a lot, that says “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and not the same man.” That is really the takeaway from this story, that even when Irene seems to be getting what she’s after, she realizes that the person who is initially after that goal is no longer with us, and that she is a new person and has a new goal. And hopefully we’ve conveyed the idea that we all change, and we need to embrace that change, because it’s a beautiful thing.
