Nasty stuff—of the sort, lord knows, that I’ve praised plenty in my time. But in this case the return on icky investment just isn’t there. Written and directed by Pascal Plante, Red Rooms centers on Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariepy), a Montreal model who becomes obsessed with a grisly court case: that of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), accused of torturing and murdering three teen girls and broadcasting the heinous acts live on the dark web. Red Rooms itself is not very graphic (it cuts away just when you expect it to), so you can’t exactly accuse it of being exploitative. But the movie nevertheless feels as keyed up about itself as Kelly-Anne is about the case. Still, there’s no denying the impressive technical chops Plante and cinematographer Vincent Biron bring to the material—particularly the courtroom scenes, where the long takes, variety of angles, and slow zooms combine to form a visual representation of a case that may not be as simple as it seems. Or maybe it is? Red Rooms leaves enough open questions to be able to claim a variety of interpretations, but a few answers might have gone a long way. This applies to the character of Kelly-Anne; Gariepy gives a fascinatingly blank performance at first, but never progresses past being a cypher with screenwriter character traits (when not modeling, Kelly-Anne rakes in the cryptocurrency while playing online poker). She’s a concept—or, more accurately, a vessel for a variety of them.
(1/9/2025)
