Review: Red Rooms (2023) Dir. Pascal Plante

Let's give movie reviews a go, shall we?

Synopsis

The high-profile case of serial killer Ludovic Chevalier has just gone to trial, and Kelly-Anne is obsessed. When reality blurs with her morbid fantasies, she goes down a dark path to seek the final piece of the puzzle: the missing video of a murdered 13-year-old girl, to whom Kelly-Anne bears a disturbing resemblance.

Review

First and foremost, this is my first film review, something I’m hoping to explore more in 2025. Do I really know how these things go outside of a casual Letterboxd review here and there? Nah, not really. But, I will treat these similar to book reviews and hopefully generate room for discussion. This will be a spoiler-free review so worry not if you haven’t seen it yet.

Red Rooms is a film that gained a lot of buzz over the last year from some of the horror folks I follow on socials, but its appearance on Shudder prompted my late-night viewing of the 118-minute film. The synopsis alone felt incredibly captivating, and it’s safe to say this film did not disappoint. For fans of horror novels that examine our fascination and personal investment related to crime (Letters to the Purple Satin Killer by Joshua Chaplinsky, Lost Man’s Lane by Scott Carson, and Come With Me by Ronald Malfi to name a few), Red Rooms is not a film to be missed. Fair warning though, this is a grisly, unflinching, and rather intense look at obsession, justice, and intent. Proceed with caution.

As it stands, our current society has held a fascination with true crime. It’s hard to discern how this came to be or why, but speaking for myself, it’s hard to look away from the worst that our own kind has to offer. “The devil you know,” and all that, I am a person who would rather look into the dangers this life has to offer than turn away. There’s a lot to say about that decision, but that’s for a different essay. As it relates to Red Rooms, Plante posits two sides of the same coin of this attraction to the horrific with two of the characters, Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) and Clementine (Laurie Babin), both women who attend the trial of alleged serial killer Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) as observers.

While we know very quickly within the first fifteen minutes why Clementine is attending this trial, Kelly-Anne’s intentions aren’t so clear. This is the driving force of the film, the engine that revs with intensity and intrigue. Kelly-Anne is a woman who is highly successful as a model, technologically proficient (to say the least), and generally controlled. Her methodical existence carries an edge that suggests a certain psychological profile, but our discernment of her character is (what I feel) the film is about.

The crimes allegedly committed by Chevalier are of the most heinous nature, deaths (torture, if you ask me) of teenage girls recorded and sold on the dark web for profit. The beginning of the film is the opening statements of both the prosecution and the defense, setting a startling, arresting tone. There’s no chance of accidental death here as this is a calculated, violent, and abhorrent crime. So why would anyone want to sit through a trial of the most heinous aspects that human nature has to offer?

Well, why did women fall in love with Ted Bundy? Why did the Menendez brothers get a new Netflix movie? Why are we giving attention to the deplorable?

These are questions we don’t have answers to, questions I have debated for a very long time, trying to even define my own role within my fascination with these very questions. The truth of the matter is, how far would you go? In the name of fascination, in the name of justice? How deeply do you gaze into that endless black hole? And what is the cost of doing such a thing?

Red Rooms is not a movie that will give you these answers, but it’s all the more commendable for those very reasons. Instead of spoon-feeding us judgment around this fascination, Pascal Plante gives us a playground to decide for ourselves where we land in the darkness. Kelly-Anne’s mysteriousness is a blank canvas in which we can project our own thoughts, feelings, and inferences about the kind of person she is, the moth drawn to a flame that is almost guaranteed to burn its wings. Juliette Gariépy’s portrayal is simply stunning as she carries a silent intensity that never truly relents, calling into question her intentions despite the outcome. Tense, brimming with suspense, and crafted from the essence of depravity, Red Rooms feels like a ghost story, the haunting nature of our obsessions never truly leaving our minds as reflected by our actions.