Written and Directed by Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus | 109 min | ▲▲▲▲ | For rent on VOD
There weren’t a lot of multiverse science fictions before the MCU made it part of their regular canon — maybe the most prominent pre-Marvel I can think of is Sliding Doors. But here’s one that’s popped up without much hype, but hype is what it deserves. This is an impressively good sci-fi revenge thriller with real notes of serial killer horror, directed with a lot of confidence by the McManus Brothers and starring their sister, Michaela McManus.
She’s Irene, a mother bereft since her 14-year-old daughter was kidnapped and murdered by a serial killer, Neville (Jeremy Holm). In her reality, technology exists to bridge universes, so she’s been searching for a world where her daughter is still alive, and if she isn’t, she sends that world’s Neville to hell with her revolver, or immolates him (see above).
She’s been jumping from universe to universe so often she’s become a bit of a shell of herself, her only pleasure seeing Neville eat lead or a receive a shiv to the guts. These universes are entirely too similar to the one she left behind, and her daughter has been murdered in each of them.
Funnily enough for such a serious picture, the multiverse machine she uses really resembles the coffin-like boxes the dudes in Primer used to travel through time, but with a kind of charming steampunk sheen — lots of smoke and rivets.
In one of these universes, Irene rescues Mia (Stella Marcus), a young woman kidnapped and locked up in Neville’s home. She’s a foster kid who’s bucking the system, and when she starts to understand Irene’s mission she wants to be part of it. Irene wants nothing to do with that idea, but Mia takes off with Irene’s weapon and for about 10 minutes Mia is our protagonist, Irene disappears from the story. It’s a gutsy narrative turn that could go badly wrong, but these filmmakers have plenty of confidence in their conceit and performers who completely inhabit these characters — we’re happy to take a detour before reconnecting with our central, avenging multiverse hopper.
The McManus Brothers confidence extends to the film’s action sequences — at one point Irene needs to connect with folks who provide the tech for her to repair her machine. It’s a dodgy situation, but ends with a camera perched on a truck’s rearview mirrors driving away from an explosion — classic.
It’s a thrill to see this material, very much in the territory of b-movies, treated with a lot of seriousness and women repeatedly at the forefront of the storytelling, forwarding an emotional core about surviving trauma. It’s not outrageous to compare this film favourably with the first Terminator movie, from the Linda Hamilton vibes right down to the percussive, moody score from Paul Koch, clearly influenced by the great electronic music composers of the ’80s, Brad Fiedel, Wendy Carlos, and Tangerine Dream.
In the final stretch the picture leans into the horror tropes around Neville’s nastiness and away from some of the broader implications of the multiple universes, which I had less time for, but the film packs plenty of punch as it turns up the suspense, with room for a light Night of The Hunter homage in the finale.
This is a new genre entry that deserves a much larger audience, highly recommended.
