I’ve never seen anything quite like writer/director Pascal Plante’s RED ROOMS. There is perhaps no better place to start than with that. On its face it is a simple, straightforward nightmare about obsession, spectatorship, and casual violence. A testament to the harrowing potential of simplicity, RED ROOMS is far more interested in engaging with how we respond to violence than in putting it on display.
It follows the criminal trial of one Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), who brutally murdered and dismembered three young girls—ages 13, 14, and 16—and live streamed it on corners of the dark web known as “red rooms”, where people pay to watch such heinous acts. Model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) becomes obsessed with the trial and with Chevalier, waking early to get in line and be as close as possible to the proceedings as a spectator in the courtroom. Similarly obsessed is Clementine (Laurie Babin), who claims to be in love with Chevalier and believes he is falsely accused. Every bit of video in which he is clearly displayed has, according to Clementine, been faked.
Naturally, as they both attend the courtroom every day, Clementine becomes a bit of a media magnet herself, while Kelly-Anne stays mostly in the shadows, occasionally trying to reason Clementine out of some of her more outrageous sounding statements. The two present opposite ends of an incredibly toxic—and all too common—spectrum.
Fandom of any kind has always had an element of risk to it. Risk of over-consumption, of obsession. Some areas of pop culture are designed to foster this attitude as a way of increasing sales. They want you to be emotionally involved so you’re more inclined to support and consume the work of the artist. They want to feed into the fantasy of connection we build in our minds through parasocial relationships. They want us to ignore the truth: that we do not know the people behind what we’re consuming. That everything is an act. But perhaps one of the most unexpected places for fandom to develop—and even thrive—is the area of true crime.
RED ROOMS is not, to my knowledge, based on any particular real case. Rather it is a scathing indictment of what happens when we let ourselves dive too deep into something especially horrible. No matter how much we think we can keep it separate from other areas of our lives, pushed too far we can end up over the edge with no going back. We lose touch with reality, and humanity, and become wholly consumed by this thing we have built up in our minds.
That’s not to say there’s anything particularly wrong with enjoying true crime—so long as you do so responsibly. If your focus remains on more than just the perpetrator and their actions, includes the victims and remembering them for the lives they lost at the hands of someone with too much hubris or too little human compassion or reason. Losing sight of this element puts you that much closer to the kinds of people who unironically idolize the Mansons, Bundys, and Dahmers of the world.
The film follows Kelly-Anne as she descends further and further into a terrifying obsession not just with the man, but with his acts. Juliette Gariépy’s performance as Kelly-Anne is equally as harrowing as Maxwell McCabe-Lokos’s as Chevalier. Laurie Babin’s turn as Clementine is almost squirm-inducing in her eagerness to please and to believe the impossible of a monster, but her arc is one of much needed empathy in an otherwise stomach-churningly bleak tale. The three of them present so much detail about their respective characters’ mindsets with very little effort. Despite Clementine’s nervous babbling, much of RED ROOMS’ effectiveness is in the eyes, rather than the words. The defense and prosecuting attorneys give us the grisly details of Chevalier’s murders, and in a couple of snippets we are shown bits of the snuff he streamed in the red rooms, but much of the work of what makes this film work its dark magic is in the sound design and in the reactions.
Dominique Plante’s score for the film goes hand in hand with the performances to create one of the most spine-chilling film watching experiences I have ever had. There is a moment, at the climax, that gives me chills all through my body even as it turns my stomach—no matter how many times I watched to prepare for this review—thanks to a stunning combo of musical sting and character work.
I have never seen anything quite like RED ROOMS. It is unrelentingly cold and bleak. It is firmly planted in reality, and yet still manages to dip us into a sense of the unbelievable. It is a deep, dark mirror held up to the culture of celebrity worship—no matter how the “celebrity” was earned—and to the depravity humanity is capable of. Because, yes, we predominantly follow Kelly-Anne, and eventually Clementine, and they are both uniquely terrifying specters of obsession, but what is perhaps most sickening is the casual, constant dinging of anonymous spectators of the dark web, watching and betting on ownership of footage of the grisly murder and dismemberment of a child.
RED ROOMS is a cold, difficult watch. But there is something at its core that feels vitally necessary in an age where we are constantly exposed to violence that feels untouchable but is nonetheless real—we must not forget our humanity and compassion in the face of the horrific.
RED ROOMS is in theaters September 6, 2024.
Tags: Dominique Plante, Juliette Gariepy, Laurie Babin, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Pascal Plante, Red Rooms
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