Red Rooms (2023)

Here’s a French-Canadian movie with ambitions of addressing unhealthy public infatuations and obsessions with true-crime stuff, up to and including podcasters and so-called web sleuths and the many tricks of their trade. The statuesque, coldly numb Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariepy) has a day job as a model, with a terrific apartment in downtown Montreal. At home she is surrounded by high-end voice-activated computer equipment that enables her to pursue her various interests, which include checking her email, playing online poker for money, and looking for things on the “dark web” at large. She is presently attending the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), who is charged with the murders, torture, and dismemberment of three teenage girls in separate incidents. He shot video of his depredations, two of which have been recovered and will be played at trial, although they don’t necessarily positively identify Chevalier, who wears a mask in the videos. Red Rooms intends to shock us with its revelations—“red rooms” are alleged sites on the dark web where people are tortured and killed, a kind of cross-pollination of OnlyFans and snuff films, suitable for Videodrome programming. But, while we hear the screaming and power tool noises in the brief clips we’re exposed to from the videos at the trial, we are never shown them. I’m not saying I’m disappointed (really, I’d rather not see these things) but it felt to me like a determinedly flinty movie going uncharacteristically soft. It might be an effort to get a more audience-friendly rating, but it has not been submitted anywhere for rating. Certainly, anyway, we can imagine what’s going on from the descriptions we’re given and what we hear, but it does seem notably coy. Kelly-Anne picks up a Chevalier groupie along the way, Clementine (Laurie Babin), and gives her a place to stay while the trial is going on. Clementine obviously represents a well-known type of troubled true-crime aficionado, but this all feels unlikely. Groupies like Clementine do exist, but I had trouble making out the motivations here. The icy Kelly-Anne seems to be a bit of a psychopath herself, is maybe the point, as she has illicitly acquired copies of the two known videos and we see how she acquires the third when she learns it is available. Another day, at the trial, Kelly-Anne shows up dressed explicitly as one of the victims, including metallic orthodontics on her teeth. She is forcibly ejected from the trial. I was not clear at all on why she did that. I liked a lot of things about Red Rooms but I’m not sure director and writer Pascal Plante ever brings it all the way home. Something at its center feels a little hollow, phony and pretentious.