‘Redux Redux’: Filmmakers Matthew and Kevin McManus ask what multiverse travel would do to a grieving mother – Yahoo News UK
‘Redux Redux’: Filmmakers Matthew and Kevin McManus ask what multiverse travel would do to a grieving mother “It really started from trying to tell a multiverse story that felt a little bit more personal and a little bit more intimate,” Kevin McManus said Elisabetta Bianchini Tue 24 February 2026 at 5:43 am UTC 9 min read Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.
Redux Redux filmmakers: Matthew McManus (R) and Kevin McManus (L) (Stella Marcus) For filmmakers Matthew McManus and Kevin McManus, making their new movie, Redux Redux , was a family affair. The brothers have built their careers together, but in this project, their sister, Michaela McManus ( One Tree Hill ), is the lead, and their mom makes a cameo.
“There are moments on set where I’m just looking around at my mom and my sister in the same scene, and Kevin and I directing, and it feels like this pinch me moment of, I can’t believe we actually all came out here and did this thing,” Matthew McManus told Yahoo. “If you can work with your siblings, you work with your friends, there’s nothing better than that.”
Redux Redux is a unique take on a multiverse movie. While many associate the concept with Marvel and superhero movies, the McManus brothers have brought something more inventive to the table, with a story that keenly focuses on the evolving emotions of its characters.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Michaela McManus plays Irene Kelly, whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered, and she moves through parallel universes over and over again to kill her daughter’s murderer, Neville (Jeremy Holm), while trying to find a multiverse where her daughter is alive.
Then Irene finds Mia (Stella Marcus), a 15-year-old who’s Neville’s next victim, and Irene helps Mia run away. At a moment when Irene is losing her humanity, Mia also has a desire for vengeance against Nevelle.
“I think it really started from trying to tell a multiverse story that felt a little bit more personal and a little bit more intimate,” Kevin McManus said. “Time travel is such a close relative of the multiverse story, and early time travel stories really felt like it was less about the concept, more about the opportunity to get a bunch of characters into a fantasy situation to live among the dinosaurs or being in King Arthur’s Court, or something like that.”
“And it wasn’t until we watched movies like Back to the Future or The Terminator [when we] felt like, oh, these stories are really personal, and they feel intimate, even if they have world-ending implications. … So that is something that really drew us to wanting to do something similar with the multiverse. And the concept we had with it was, if there’s an infinite amount of universes out there, then what if the changes between them are infinitely small? What would that do to a character who’s going through the multiverse to change their circumstances? How frustrating would that be? What would that do to them and their psychology? So that was really the seed that kind of grew into the movie.”
Michaela McManus in Redux Redux (Saban Films) ‘Rescuing each other’ It’s easy to be won over by Redux Redux from the first shot alone, as we see a man, tied to a chair, being engulfed in flames as Irene watches with no expression. It makes you instantly curious about her life and her story, while you’re also captivated by the visual.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “We knew we wanted to jump into the action and not tell our audience too much,” Matthew McManus said. “The tricky thing about that is, you never want your audience to feel like they’re up a creek without a paddle and have no idea what’s going on. … And so our hope with those first few scenes was that the audience would think, OK I’m watching a loop movie. That must be what this is. And then as it starts to unfold, [they realize] it’s not even a loop movie. Actually, this is a multiverse movie.”
“But the biggest thing we wanted to figure out was that first shot, and we’re like, we need to have something that is loud enough, that’s grabby enough, that gets an audience to want to just settle in, put down their phone and watch the movie. … We talked to our stunt guys and they were like, ‘We’ve been lighting people on fire for hundreds of years.'”
Stella Marcus and Michaela McManus in Redux Redux (Saban Films) The shifting dynamic and interplay between Irene and Mia is core to the story, but as the McManus brothers explained, Mia is a character who’s also able to bring some levity to the tone of the film, balancing the absolutely devastating reality that Irene’s been living with, which has caused her to get stuck in the unsatisfying cycle of revenge.
“We’ve been in a pretty dark place for the first 25 minutes, or [so], and we wanted to have somebody who was fun and exciting and kind of shifted the movie in a big way,” Matthew McManus said. “It’s tough because she’s a victim of this terrifying serial killer, and so we realized the best way to do this was really lean into comedy as a defence mechanism for her.”
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “She is assertive, she’s tough, she’s got kind of a sharp wit to her, and it’s all this sort of veneer. She’s still actually this broken kid underneath it all, and she’s just so tired of being beaten down. And so that’s what we were hoping for. And I think that becomes this sort of antidote to Irene, hopefully, because Irene has been going down this rabbit hole. She has been destroying her life, but she doesn’t want to see somebody else destroy their [life]. And that, I think, becomes a powerful tool to get yourself out of your own way to try to help somebody else. All of my favourite revenge films, they start off as revenge films and they end up as rescue missions. And I think that, in so many ways, is what this movie is about. It’s them rescuing each other.”
But in terms of lighting the mood, the filmmakers allowed the characters Irene and Mia meet for a short time in the film to add some comedy, while also evaluating how any humour felt in balance to the core storyline.
“There’s one sequence at the end, there’s that kind of montage, it’s pretty heavy, … right after their kind of breakup scene, and there was a character behind the counter at the Walmart who, at the time when we filmed it, was on the phone, kind of doing all the lines from The Terminator gun salesman, where he’s like, ‘Oh, you really know your weapons,’ that whole riff,” Kevin McManus shared. “We’re all cracking up, having a good time, … and then you’re in the edit, and you’re like, ‘What was I thinking? … It can’t be light. This is like the heaviest part of the movie.’ So all that ends up getting squashed down in the mix.”
“So occasionally, in the moment, you can make some mistakes, and then have to find it in the edit. But you’re always calibrating every step of the way.”
AUSTIN, TEXAS – MARCH 09: (L-R) Matthew McManus, Nate Cormier, Jeremy Holm, Michael J. McGarry, Kevin McManus, Michaela McManus and PJ McCabe pose in the Getty Images Portrait Studio Presented by IMDb and IMDbPro at SXSW 2025 on March 09, 2025 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Robby Klein/Getty Images for IMDb) (Robby Klein via Getty Images) ‘No matter how much money you spend on any project, it never feels like enough’ In addition to writing and directing their own films, the McManus brothers have also worked on a number of particularly popular projects, including the masterful true crime satire American Vandal , and Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda’s following series Players . Matthew McManus and Kevin McManus also worked on Season 2 of Cobra Kai .
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Players , a series about a fictional League of Legends pro team heading to the national championship, was actually the first Zoom writers room the McManus brothers were a part of. At a time when being able to connect with people in any capacity, amid the tail end of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, felt particularly special.
“I’m just so proud of that series. Going through the whole process was a delight, and I wish more people could have seen it,” Matthew McManus said.
“It was such a deep dive into a world we didn’t know anything about before jumping into that show, … and also [got to] take advantage of all the tropes of our favourite sports documentaries,” Kevin McManus added.
In a similar fashion to how American Vandal and Players played with tropes, the McManus brothers highlighted that they love looking at the mechanisms of a genre and deciding how to lean into or subvert those expectations in their own films.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “I think oftentimes when people are first starting writing, they go, don’t write something brand new, and … if it’s ever been done before, I’ve got to run away. And that’s impossible. … Everything’s been done,” Matthew McManus said.
“Embracing those moments and knowing how to use those tools is a really exciting thing. And so I love that about Players and Vadal , and it’s something we certainly do with the genre stuff we do as well. We’re always kind of looking at our favourite moments and trying to figure out, how can you wrap that up a little bit differently?”
But the McManus brothers have also learned a lot through their own projects, including their 2012 film Funeral Kings and their 2020 movie The Block Island Sound .
“It was a bit of a learning curve when you’re on a movie like [ Funeral Kings ], because we did it the year after we graduated college. So you’re going into a kind of as a glorified student film,” Kevin McManus said. “We were shot listing the night before every day, going, ‘Oh, well, this is what we have to do.'”
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “But then, … taking the things you learned about being scrappy and a really low-budget shoot like that, … can really apply in helpful ways all over the place. … It’s amazing how no matter how much money you spend on any project, it never feels like enough, and it never feels that different from the ultra low budget movies you’re working on.”
“There’s this real journey of [ Funeral Kings ]. We shot it in 26 days and made it for not a lot of money, but then we realized, well, if we want to make money, then we’ve got to make something for even less money,” Matthew McManus added. “And so then we made our next movie, and it was in 10 days. … And then that movie did well enough that then we’re like, OK we can take some of those things, but actually give ourselves a little bit more grace and a little bit more room. And then finally got to Redux Redux , but it’s still only an 18-day shoot.”
Up next for the McManus brothers, they have a few ideas for something in the “grounded science fiction” space, while also being interested in doing a horror film, and are developing something in that genre as well.
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