Red Rooms

by Mike McGranaghan

Serial killer movies are often popular, but they can be hard to take for viewers who are sensitive to bloody violence. Anyone craving the intense thrills of The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en without the gruesome imagery should waste no time in seeing the French-Canadian import Red Rooms, which masterfully builds a tone of excruciating dread without ever showing the central killer’s actions. You hear them, and you witness the faces of characters who are watching videotaped murders instead. In writer/director Pascal Plante’s hands, nothing else is needed to get fully under your skin.

Model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) is obsessed with Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), a man accused of brutally slaying three teenage girls and broadcasting the footage in a “red room” on the dark web. She’s so intent on being a witness at his trial that she sleeps outside the courthouse to guarantee getting a seat inside. Kelly-Anne meets another obsessed spectator, Clementine (Laurie Babin). They strike up a friendship, despite differing opinions on Chevalier’s guilt. As the proceedings go on, both women are changed by the revelations. Kelly-Anne, in particular, appears to walk a fine line as she seeks to deeper understand the potential killer’s methods.

Red Rooms sets up the suspense immediately, via a long, single-shot take inside the courtroom as the prosecution and defense attorneys make their opening statements. Hearing the descriptions of what happened psychologically primes us for the terror to come. We don’t need every last detail because the film makes it clear that what happened was sadism of the highest order. Ludovic sits eerily and silently inside a glass cell, appearing nonchalant about the charges he’s facing. Could that be the cold detachment of an unrepentant killer, or is this an innocent man simply overwhelmed by the accusations?

Once that initial tension is in place, the film ramps it up with a scene where Kelly-Anne and Clementine try to peek through the courtroom doors to gauge reactions as the videos are privately shown. They can hear the audio from it. Another harrowing scene finds the women watching those videos on a computer monitor, their faces registering the brutality. Sequences like these are a big part of what makes the movie effective. Plante knows what we imagine in our heads is way worse than anything he could actually show.

Gariépy is strong in the central role, continually making you wonder if Kelly-Anne is about to take a deep dive off the edge of sanity. Her best moment comes when the character makes a deliberate attempt to goad Chevalier, an act guaranteed to have you gasping. Babin is also fine as Clementine, a young woman forced to reconcile her belief that Chevalier is innocent with the unpleasant facts of the case. Her work never quite goes where you expect it to, to the story’s benefit.

Red Rooms isn’t so much about the outcome of the trial as it is about how Kelly-Anne is transformed by the experience of skirting the edges. There is resolution regarding Chevalier, but the drama truly arises from watching our heroine stare into the dark abyss and wondering if she’s going to get sucked in. Without showing any bloodshed, the film manages to give you a sickening, knot-in-your-stomach feeling.

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