'Red Rooms': A Deeply Absorbing Canadian Psychological Thriller About a Woman Drawn Into a Dark Web Murder Trial
Red Rooms (Les Chambres Rouges) (2023) is a deeply absorbing Canadian psychological thriller starring Juliette Gariépy as Kelly-Anne, a Montreal-based fashion model harboring a growing fascination with the darker reaches of technology. She becomes fixated upon the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), who stands accused of murdering three young girls in a deep web "red room"—a case that has attracted widespread media attention as well as a devoted contingent of supporters convinced of his innocence.
Kelly-Anne soon befriends Clementine (Laurie Babin), an outspoken Chevalier devotee whom she invites into her home and accompanies on daily trips to the courthouse, though the nature of Kelly-Anne's own fascination with the case remains increasingly difficult to discern. As the trial unfolds, she ventures further into the dark web in search of a missing snuff film that may provide definitive proof of Chevalier's guilt, placing herself in increasingly disturbing proximity to the horrors at the center of the proceedings.
Written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Pascal Plante (Nadia, Butterfly), Red Rooms is a pensive and deeply unsettling work imbued with a palpable sense of trepidation. Plante maintains a remarkable degree of tension while allowing Kelly-Anne's moral ambiguity to remain largely inscrutable, with Gariépy delivering a fascinatingly controlled performance at the film's center. The result is an unnerving psychological study that builds toward a provocative final reckoning without ever surrendering its air of mystery.
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