You don’t need to know the difference between the deep web and the dark web to understand that Red Rooms (now streaming on Shudder) unfolds with an air of plausibility that’s almost certain to creep you out. French-Canadian writer-director Pascal Plante crafts an ice-cold creeper whose premise hinges on the existence of “red rooms,” urban-legendary places where psychos livestream their torturous and/or murderous acts in the dankest dungeons on the internet. (Good god man, we HOPE such things don’t really exist.) More specifically, the film is about a woman obsessed with the case of a red-room killer, and she’s played by Juliette Gariepy, who deserves an Oscar nom for slicing us apart with her searing intensity. A movie not for the weak of constitution, then.
The Gist: Kelly-Anne (Gariepy) is a fashion model with a high-rise apartment boasting a gorgeous view of Montreal, but here she is, sleeping on the street. If she didn’t get her beauty sleep on the sidewalk, she might not get a seat in the courtroom for the high-profile trial of Ludovic “the Demon of Rosemont” Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), a dead-eyed accusee under scrutiny for the murder of three teenage girls, including a litany of offenses including “committing an obscenity on a corpse.” Don’t worry – we don’t see his heinous deeds in the movie, a simple fact that will inevitably find some horror-moviemongers crying foul for not seeing blood. Tough rocks, sickos, this is what you call psychological horror. It’s actually scarier than exposed spleens and intestines! You should try it sometime!
Apologies. Light must be made on occasion when thoroughly realistic awfulness presents itself to us. Carrying on: The camera pivots back and forth, back and forth, as the prosecution and defense make their opening statements. It pauses on Chevalier sitting with his legs crossed in a glass box, and on Kelly-Anne as she watches without expression. At the end of the day, Kelly-Anne makes her way out of the courtroom and brushes past Clementine (Laurie Babin), a wide-eyed naif who’ll tell anyone who’ll listen, in this case a TV reporter, perfectly reasonable things like Chevalier is innocent until proven guilty and he shouldn’t be tried in the court of public opinion and perfectly unreasonable conspiracy theories like the bodies could’ve been planted in his backyard, and the damning videos could’ve been planted on his hard drive, and his eyes tell the truth. Funny, how the only thing we see in the videos are Chevalier’s eyes, as he’s wearing a ski mask, which is the wedge the defense uses to bring up the question of reasonable doubt.
But this movie is about Kelly-Anne, about whom we know, well, not much. That may be because she doesn’t have much going on, to be honest, perhaps by design. When she gets home from the trial she makes herself a smoothie and fires up her computer to play online poker, which might be her real job? She also shows her hacking skills as she researches the mother of one of the victims and communicates with an AI bot she customized herself. After a few days of the trial, she establishes a rapport with Clementine, who’s from out of town and staying in a shelter. And so they become roomies in Kelly-Anne’s apartment, Clementine reading Chevalier’s horoscope with glassy-eyed admiration while Kelly-Anne listens quietly. She’s not the type to show her hand too soon, see. We still don’t know what her vested interest in Chevalier is. She will give Clementine some squash lessons, though – helps you get through those times when you’re feeling unstable, Kelly-Anne says. They reach the horrible day where the snuff videos are to be presented in court, and all observers are asked to leave. And Clementine seems… disappointed? So Kelly-Anne takes her back to the apartment and shows them to her.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Red Rooms is a variation of, and a different angle on, the austere vibes of the more sensationalist (and similarly scary) Longlegs. Plante also seems to be cut from the same patch of cloth as David Fincher and Nicolas Winding-Refn.
Performance Worth Watching: There’s no denying Gariepy’s commitment – she’s enigmatic and charismatic and in the end we’re still not sure how we feel about her. Conflicted, I guess.
Memorable Dialogue: Kelly-Anne: “I know where to look.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Even though we don’t “see anything,” there’s a serious yuck factor to Red Rooms, because so much of the movie feels like cybervoyeurism as Plante’s camera hangs over Kelly-Anne’s shoulder as she navigates the dark web on her phone or computer, doing whatever it is she’s doing, for whatever reasons. We spend the majority of the film’s two hours hanging in suspense, trying to suss out her motives, which may be as simple as a somewhat aimless and inexplicable obsession with – here comes the yuckiest bit – true crime. She is, for lack of a better phrase, a serial killer groupie. If that’s your interpretation, then she’s far easier to dislike, isn’t she?
Very little that we see in the film is particularly implausible, and such is the source of our chills. That, and Plante’s brilliantly calculated visual style washed over with a color palette that makes gray look extra gray. And also his steadfast refusal to find a slice of humanity in Kelly-Anne, who isn’t quite a robot programmed to a rigid routine, but she sure seems to be getting there. Does she have friends? Family? Anyone? She seems friendly enough with Clementine, which is something – she even buys her her own squash racket. Kelly-Anne’s lack of character is her character, and from that arises its own wasp’s nest of moral complexities and contradictions. I felt a touch disappointed with the conclusion of Red Rooms, as it tips its hand where, say, Paul Schrader might not. (Michael Haneke definitely wouldn’t.) But getting to that point is riveting, Plante delivering big coagulating droplets of concentrated psych-horror with grim effectiveness.
Our Call: Red Rooms is a gripping, under-the-radar gem that establishes Plante as an auteur worth your eye. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.