- Director: Pascal Plante
- Writer: Pascal Plante
- Stars: Juliette Gariépy, Laurie Babin, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos
REVIEW
The obsession with True Crime has risen sharply in the past ten to fifteen years and continues to climb. With films, documentaries, limited series, and of course podcasts, even some of the real cold cases are being solved and online sleuths have found a purpose. Red Rooms plays on this phenomenon and throws in the dark web and how humans are more connected than ever, yet more alone.
Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), who stands accused as the movie opens of killing three teenage girls in hideously grotesque ways, live-streaming the crimes in a “red room” on the dark web. Every day of the trial model, Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) turns up, keen to devour every detail of the trial. She knows the case very well, but you get the feeling she knows more than she says – but why? Morbid curiosity or something that has awakened her darker thoughts? Taking to sleeping rough on the streets, close to the courthouse (purely so she doesn’t miss a court day) Kelly-Anne meets Clementine (Laurie Babin), another person obsessed with this case. Clementine is a conspiracy theorist, however, determined in her thinking that Ludovic Chevalier has been set up. Whilst Kelly-Anne is obsessed with the whole case, Clementine is infatuated with Ludovic.
Gariépy is superb as the seemingly disaffected Kelly-Anne. We get to see her layers peeled back bit by bit, never quite sure of her motivations (until the very end), it’s a brilliant performance, cold yet accessible. Babin is terrific as well, playing the naive foil for Gariépy’s harsh knowingness.
Red Rooms isn’t a horror film, in fact it would mostly be called a courtroom drama but Plante gives the film so much tension and that creeping dread, the kind that slithers up on you like a snake and starts to slowly crush you, the further into the film you go. Turning the screws on the audience whilst methodically moving the story ahead, making sure that you don’t know what’s coming.
The film also addresses that gnawing need in some people to see the absolute worst, in the internet age, there are infamous videos, before that it was a passed on VHS. Red Rooms hits that point and then gives it an extra layer by introducing the dark web.
Red Rooms is a bleak, slow burn film that sits in your mind for some time after watching.
Red Rooms is in select cinemas (USA)
Ryan Morrissey-Smith
Leave a Reply