Red Rooms

Synopsis: The high-profile case of serial killer Ludovic Chevalier has just gone to trial, and Kelly-Anne is obsessed. When reality blurs with her morbid fantasies, she goes down a dark path to seek the final piece of the case’s puzzle.

Review:

This is the first piece of media that I watched the morning after the 97th Academy Awards, I popped the blu-ray into my player at 10am on March 3, 2025 and am sitting here writing this review just after noon. I was intrigued to watch this movie because of Adam Nayman who is likely my favorite working film critic. He wrote his Best Films of 2024 article on Ringer and his video essay on the same subject on the Ringer Movies channel on Youtube and at the top of his list was Red Rooms. So I had purchased Red Rooms on Blu-ray directly from the boutique physical media company Vinegar Syndrome, knowing full well I wouldn’t be able to watch it til after the Oscars. I can tell you that this film was worthy of kicking off my post-Oscars palette cleanse, after almost a year of cheering on Anora and the rest of the honored films and creatives, I was hopeful that I could find something that was wholly unique. What I was greeted with was a film that is haunting, beautiful, intense and will stick with me for a long time.

We open in Montreal and follow Kelly-Anne a fashion model, played by Juliette Gariépy who is attending a trial of an accused serial killer Ludovic Chevalier, who is played wordlessly by Maxwell McCabe-Lokos. Chevalier is accused of murdering, dismembering and mutilating three teenage girls and broadcasting to a chat room on the dark web known as a “Red Room”, where folks can pay to watch these heinous acts. As you would imagine a case where three young teenage girls have been murdered in such a horrific way the case has become a media circus and attracted the attention of both the press and obsessives of Chevalier. The FBI has turned over two of the teenager’s snuff films to the Canadian authorities, the killer in the video’s wears a balaclava and that obscures their identity, despite damning evidence such as the girls’ corpses that were found buried in Chevalier’s backyard.

I will leave you there and comment on why the film has skyrocketed my top 10 of 2024. The film will stick with me forever, the cinematography is the domain of Vincent Biron and the production design is handled by Laura Nhem together they have created haunting and beautiful scenes and sense of palpable dread. The true heart of this film is it’s restraint and that is directly in the hands of the writer / director Pascal Plante who never tips his hand and gives into the instinct that the audience needs to see the horrors of this film but rather uses all the tools in his toolbox to leave the horror to the imagination of the viewers. In a more just and honest world this film would have been nominated for as many as 10 academy awards last night and walked away with over half of them. I know this film is challenging and tough subject matter but this film is one of the treasures of 2024 and you won’t be disappointed if you watched it, hope you give it a chance!