Funereal Plots
Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Red Rooms

Writer/Director: Pascal Plante

Fashion model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) is obsessed with the trail of accused serial killer Ludovic Chevalier, who allegedly filmed his brutal assaults on young girls and posted them on the dark web for the entertainment of anonymous enthusiasts. She sleeps rough outside the courthouse. At home, she uses her hacking skills to infiltrate the lives of one of the parents of the victims. She befriends Clementine (Laurie Babin), a lost, waifish Chevalier “groupie,” who is convinced of his innocence despite mountains of circumstantial evidence.

Red Rooms unfolds deceptively slowly, with drawn-out courtroom opening arguments interspersed with Kelly-Anne’s modeling sessions and her time sitting in the glow of the computer screen, ferreting out forbidden information, Wi-Fi and Ring camera passwords.

This is a paranoid psychological thriller of the first order. The alleged killer is a minor character with no lines. Kelly-Anne’s computer AI, which she must train not to be racist, not to encourage suicide, and to produce dad jokes on command, is onscreen more than Chevalier. The dark web looms behind everything. There are fascinating details about cryptocurrency and clandestine auctions. And what about the man who keeps looking at her in the courtroom? Is he a hacker, a detective tracking Kelly-Anne’s extralegal internet activities?

But more than a thriller, Red Rooms is also a study of obsession. Unlike Clementine, Kelly-Anne’s obsession isn’t based on a presumption of innocence—it’s a darker species of fascination. Kelly-Anne is spiraling. Where Clementine flinches and turns away, she stares. She seeks a missing video featuring the torture of the killer’s youngest victim. She finds herself thrown out of the courtroom and out of modeling gigs due to a shocking stunt she pulls in the courtroom, which is best seen in the movie and not described in a review.

The lead actors in this movie are excellent, and the direction and cinematography mirror the descent of Kelly-Anne, the musical cues, alternately melancholy and jarring, and the pacing, though some may find the latter slow, work in the film’s favor.

The ending, also best left out of this spoiler-free review, is not necessarily how one might have expected the story to play out, but it manages to be both satisfying and inconclusive at the same time.

Red Rooms is largely a French language film, and is currently streaming on Shudder.