Redux Redux review review: A sharp indie sci-fi twist on the Taken formula
The indie sci-fi thriller takes the Taken concept and runs with it in new and exciting ways
What's the most influential action movie of the last 20 years? John Wick and The Raid are tempting answers because of the aesthetic influence they've had on the genre. But I think it's clearly Taken, which has spawned so many imitators that to list them all would put me in danger of approaching the maximum length for a newsletter on this platform.
As I've looked at the action movies that came out in 1991 and 2026, I've noticed that nearly every month this year, multiple movies have come out somewhere in the world with the basic same premise as Taken: Dad rescues kidnapped daughter from some sort of trafficking scheme. In recent years, moms have been allowed to get in on the special set of skills action as well. This year alone, there's been the Milla Jovovich movie Protector, the Brazilian movie Rio de Sangue, and Redux Redux, a new sci-fi twist on the Taken formula. Redux Redux came out in February, and is now streaming on Hulu.
Redux Redux is an indie family project, written and directed by brothers Kevin and Matthew McManus and starring their sister Michaela as Irene, a grieving mother who possesses a machine that allows her to travel across the multiverse to parallel Earths. She’s desperately searching for an Earth where her daughter lives, but is disappointed to find every variation is almost exactly the same dreary place she left. To cope, she kills her daughter’s murderer (Jeremy Holm) in each universe instead.
