Last Updated on 06/09/2024 by Arun jain
“Red Rooms,” a disturbing courtroom thriller from Quebec, explores the fascination with serial killers and true crime from a compelling fresh perspective. Directed by Pascal Plante, it takes elements of the genre — weak girls, male sickos — and adapts them to the isolation of the Internet age.
Kelly-Anne (a formidable Juliette Garripy), a model, becomes deeply invested in the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) – because she looks like a brunette version of one of his victims. Ludovic, a monstrous figure with sleepy eyes, is accused of murdering three teenage girls—not just murder, but torturing, mutilating, and dismembering them. These heinous acts were captured on video and anonymous users on the dark web paid exorbitant amounts to watch.
The first half of the film, made up of glacial pans and unsettlingly still images, builds up to the day of the trial, when the full-length video is presented to the jury. A conspiracy-monger, Clementine (Laurie Babin), believes Ludovic is innocent – she brings to mind a Manson group – but Kelly-Anne is something else, a kind of cyber-samurai who lives alone in a sterile high-rise and plays online poker. A small fortune in Bitcoin. The two women are always first in line for a spot in the trial gallery and bond uneasily and with unclear motives until the true nature of Kelly-Anne’s voyeurism pushes Clementine away.
The film’s tension rides on the unknown, a paranoid vibe accentuated by Kelly-Anne’s shadowy online presence and Garrypy’s stark, sphinx-like performance. With a dagger-throwing gaze, Garripe is an anchoring force that makes the more warped second act seem credible. Most importantly, it’s her face—the way she looks at Ludovic in the courtroom or reacts to the audio of the screaming and chainsaw-whizzing—that works together with the film’s restraint to pique our morbid curiosity.
In one scene, Kelly-Ann watches a video and all we see is the terrible blood-red glow of the torture room illuminating her amused expression. What could be so terrifying? So hypnotizing? We’re dying to know.
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