January 26, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Pascal Plante
French with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2022, in Montreal, the psychological drama film “Red Rooms” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A fashion model becomes addicted to attending the murder trial of an accused serial killer, and she goes to extremes to find evidence that would prove whether or not he’s guilty.
Culture Audience: “Red Rooms” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in watching movies about dark obsessions.
“Red Rooms” shows a haunting portrayal of what happens when a stranger’s curiosity about a serial killer turns into an obsession. Juliette Gariépy gives a riveting performance as a fashion model who inserts herself into a murder trial in more ways than one. Although “Red Rooms” has been described as a horror film, it’s more of a psychological drama. The movie has very little gore and no jump scares. Much of the horror comes from imagining what happened, based on disturbing sounds and descriptions.
Written and directed by Pascal Plante, “Red Rooms” had its world premiere at the 2023 Karlory Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic and its North American premiere at the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival. The movie takes place in 2022 in Montreal, where “Red Rooms” was filmed on location.
“Red Rooms” begins by showing a fashion model named Kelly-Anne (played by Gariépy) going through metal-detector security at a courthouse. Kelly-Anne is there for the opening day of a murder trial that is big news in Canada. A 40-year-old man named Ludovic Chevalier (played by Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) is accused of being a serial killer of three girls: 16-year-old Kim LeBlanc, 14-year-old Justine Roy and 13-year-old Camille Beaulieu. Ludovic has been given the nickname the Demon of Rosemont.
What’s particularly heinous about the way these three girls were killed is that the torturous murders (which occurred on separate days) were livestreamed on the dark web to people who paid to see these killings. The murderer covered his face with a ski mask, so only his eyes were showing. All of the murders took place in a red room. All of the murder victims were dismembered.
The jury trial is expected to last two months. Judge Marcel Godbout (played by Guy Thauvette) reminds the jury that the defendant is on trial for first-degree murder, sexual assault, abduction, confinement, bodily harm, committing indignity to a corpse, and production and distribution of obscene material. Ludovic is sitting handcuffed in the courtroom, in a glass-enclosed area separate from where the prosecution and defense teams are sitting.
The prosecutor Yasmine Chedid (played by Natalie Tannous) and the defense attorney Richard Fortin (played by Pierre Chagnon) make their opening statements. Richard says that Ludovic is not guilty because Ludovic has no motive and no history of violence. Ludovic, who is thin and balding, stares vacantly ahead and is slightly hunched over during the most of the trial.
During her opening statement, Yasmine makes sure that the jury hears what these murder victims were like before their tragic deaths cut their young lives short. Kim was a star player on her hockey team. Justine was an enthusiastic dancer. Camille was a class president at her school.
Kelly-Anne intensely watches all the activity in the courtroom, but she is particularly focused on Ludovic, who seems oblivious to Kelly-Anne and other people who might be staring at him. It’s unclear how Ludovic was arrested for the murders, but the prosecution s sure that the same person committed all three murders. Ludovic’s blue eyes look like the murderer’s eyes.
Kelly-Anne, who is a bachelorette with no children, lives alone in a sleek penthouse-styled Montreal apartment with long glass windows. She is not a very famous model, but she’s successful enough that she’s hired for national ad campaigns. “Red Rooms” shows Kelly-Anne at a few of her photo shoots and what her modeling looks like in ads.
The interior decoration of Kelly Anne’s apartment is modern and upscale but doesn’t look “lived in” and has no real personality—like a place decorated just to be a showcase. She also keeps the apartment dark at all hours of the day and night. It’s a reflection of how Kelly-Anne seems to be as a person: beautiful on the outside, but somewhat cold and mysterious on the inside.
The only conversations that Kelly-Anne has in her home is with an artificial intelligence assisant named Guenièvre, which is similar to Amazon’s Alexa. Kelly-Anne spends a lot of time going on the dark web on her computer at home. Her motives eventually become clear in the last third of the movie.
Kelly-Anne keeps to herself when she’s at the courthouse. But her visits are noticed by someone else who is a devoted spectator of this trial: Clémentine (played by Laurie Babin), who is in her early-to-mid 20s. Clémentine firmly believes that Ludovic is not guilty. It isn’t made clear until much later in the movie if Kelly-Anne thinks Ludovic is guilty or not guilty.
One morning, Kelly-Anne is surprised to see that Clémentine is waiting for her outside of the building where Kelly-Anne lives. Clémentine explains that she followed Kelly-Anne home from the courthouse because she was curious about Kelly-Anne. Clémentine is very talkative and seems to want to latch on to Kelly-Anne as a new friend.
Kelly-Anne is more aloof and treats Clémentine like a stray puppy. Clémentine says that she traveled several miles from her home to be at this trial, and she’s running out of money to stay at a hotel. Kelly-Anne invites Clémentine to stay with her during the remainder of the trial. During this visit, Kelly-Anne sees how fanatical Clémentine is about Ludovic and how much Clémentine wants to help prove that Ludovic is not guilty of the crimes.
Kelly-Anne seems both intrigued and slightly repulsed by Clémentine. Kelly-Anne also becomes fascinated by Francine Beaulieu (played by Elisabeth Locas), the mother of murder victim Camille Beaulieu. Out of all of the parents of the murder victims, Francine is the one who gives the most interviews to the media. During a TV interview at the courthouse, Francine blasts the mostly female group of Ludovic supporters by calling them “groupies.” Francine also describes Ludovic as a “parasite.”
“Red Rooms” shows Kelly-Anne’s increasing obsession about Ludovic and the murder trial and how her fixation eventually interferes with her work and takes a toll on her mental health. The movie doesn’t tell enough of a backstory about Kelly-Anne for viewers to find out if she’s generally hooked on true crime or if it’s this one particular accused killer who has become her obsession.
“Red Rooms” is a movie intended to disturb viewers in ways that are not obvious or expected. There’s a scene where a snuff video is shown to certain characters, but there are no graphic visuals showing actual murder in “Red Rooms.” Instead, only sounds of torture and murder can be heard. In many ways, hearing these sounds could be more upsetting to some people than an actual scene of showing bloody murder.
“Red Rooms” will keep people guessing until the last 20 minutes about what Kelly-Anne really wants and why she is so caught up in this trial. The story is unnerving because although it can be guessed what an accused murderer might be capable of doing, it’s less clear what type of person Kelly-Anne is. That uncertainty about Kelly-Anne will make viewers wonder if she’s a harmless spectator or someone with dangerous motivations of her own.
Utopia released “Red Rooms” in select U.S. cinemas on September 6, 2024. The movie was released on digital and VOD on October 4, 2024. Shudder and AMC+ premiered “Red Rooms” on January 14, 2025. The movie was released in Canada on August 11, 2023.