“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” French author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos coined in his 1782 novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (or Dangerous Liaisons). Many literary critics and historians believe this to be the very first use of the phrase. Centuries later, it still rings hot in the ears of filmmakers and other artists. Matthew McManus and Kevin McManus sculpt a remarkably emotional and poignant story about grief and revenge in Redux Redux (review), driving the notion of calculated vengeance into your skull. Shawn Linden’s similarly themed Hunter Hunter operates in the same provocative plane, raising themes of retribution, a woman’s bloodthirst for justice, and the role of morality.
There are moments in Redux Redux that strike like searing iron on melting skin. Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus) hasn’t been the same since the murder of her daughter, Anna (Grace Van Dien). Irene’s hellbent on finding Anna in an alternate reality where she wasn’t murdered and tossed into a lake. For years, Irene has traveled the multiverse with her world-hopping machine but has failed to find any trace of Anna alive. So, she hunts down the man who killed her, a diner cook named Neville (Jeremy Holm), and returns the favor over and over and over again. Her grief drives her lurching into darker territory, a delapidated mental state where she’s so consumed by her misery that she doesn’t realize that flesh-hungry revenge does more harm than good.
In her journey, she meets transient 15-year-old Mia (Stella Marcus) during a ransacking of Neville’s place. Neville eludes Irene’s pistol, but it seems fate intervenes to bring her and Mia together for some colossal plot. Two lost, weary souls collide. In saving Mia from the same fate as her daughter, Irene takes on the role of surrogate motherhood, finding herself protecting the young girl at all costs. But it’s not until Irene stumbles into a reality in which Anna is very much alive, and Neville has been sentenced to three life sentences in prison, that she learns what’s been right in front of her face. “Don’t talk to strangers…” sputters Irene in a brief encounter with her now-adult daughter. Tears burst from her eyes. “I’m not your mother,” she quickly adds, before scattering into the night air. That exchange shifts everything for Irene.
This Anna is very much not her daughter, and she quickly realizes that she’s been approaching her revenge all wrong. She couldn’t save her own daughter, but she can save Mia now. Neville takes Mia hostage and threatens to kill her slowly after trapping her inside a large plastic barrel. A moment of triumph leads to Mia wielding an axe into Neville’s back. It’s quite ironic that Irene wasted so much time killing this man, but it ultimately was Mia’s story that needed closure. Neville murdered her in this universe, and in getting revenge for her own death, she reclaims her life. It wasn’t Irene’s job to keep her alive; it was Mia’s. For Irene, her cold-to-the-touch revenge just didn’t do the trick of relieving the pain clawing in her chest. It was stopping evil from perpetuating against another young girl that freed her—freed them both, really. And sometimes, catharsis comes not from violence (no matter how justified) but giving your heart away.
Hunter Hunter perches at the other end of the spectrum. Revenge is served scorching hot. So much so, it burns the fingerprints right off the hands. Anne Mersault (Camille Sullivan) and her family enjoy a quiet, secluded life in the woods, far removed from civilization, except for occasional trips into town to trade animal furs and other items for supplies. The tight-knit family unit of Anne, her husband Joseph (Devon Sawa), and her daughter Renee (Summer H. Howell) feeds off the land. They hunt. They scavenge. They plant. Always at the mercy of the elements and wild animals (there’s a wolf that keeps circling their property), the Mersaults have grown so accustomed to being self-sufficient that they’ve all but forgotten their life before. It’s a brutal existence, but it’s worth the escape from the dangers of the city. The script only alludes to something tragic happening to Joseph, which forced him to recoil from humanity and start anew.
Every day is much the same. Joseph checks various traps he’s set out in the wilderness, often bringing along Renee so she can learn survival tricks. Anne remains at home—washing clothes in a nearby river, collecting water for cooking and bathing, and preparing side dishes for when Joseph and Renee return, hopefully with fresh meat to clean and roast over the fire. When it becomes clear that the ravenous wolf won’t stop until one of them is dead, Joseph leaves on a multi-day and night hunt. He vows not to return until the mouth-frothing beast is filleted on a spear. But it’s not a wolf he should be afraid of; it’s another person, a serial killer named Lou (Nick Stahl). Joseph never returns to his family, but before Anne can realize what’s happened, a very injured Lou arrives on their doorstep. Almost to a fault, Renee assumes the best in people, but not everyone has good intentions. Renee and Anne bring Lou into their ramshackle cabin to rest and heal from his wounds.
Another day goes by, and Joseph still hasn’t come back. Anne heads out into the woods for food and stumbles upon Joseph’s already decaying corpse. All she can see is red. When she returns to the cabin, she discovers her daughter’s body, already slain by Lou. It’s at that moment that Anne decides to exact her revenge. Blood curdles in her throat. She’s hot in her rage. She must get revenge at all costs, and boy, does she ever. In the film’s final scene, one of the greatest moments in horror, she skins Lou alive from head to toe while listening to music on an old Walkman. Maybe her grief was too raw and too new for her to think clearly and consider the ethics of killing a man in such a display of savagery, or maybe she was right all along to extract pounds of flesh from him for his vicious crimes. No one can really tell what’s right or wrong when the wounds still send shockwaves throughout the body.
At the end of the day, revenge makes for delicious Good for Her cinema. Redux Redux and Hunter Hunter carry similar themes, tones, and styles, approaching the subjects of grief and vengeance with honesty about how it affects a human being. Does it make you only see red? Or does it force you to confront the truth that what’s done is done, and more death can never make things okay again? Filmmakers Matthew McManus, Kevin McManus, and Shawn Linden turn these questions on the audience, and it’s up to us to figure those answers out. I’d like to think I would find myself somewhere between Irene and Anne—learn how to forgive and what it means to make room for the pain. But I just don’t know. Do you?
I’ve made a playlist to go with this week’s The Picture Show, featuring songs by The Eurhythmics, Nancy Sinatra, Rihanna, and Blondie, among many others!
sink. your. teeth.
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