Red Rooms

Red Rooms (Les Chambres rouges), written and directed by Quebecois filmmaker Pascal Plante, centers on the high-profile Montreal trial of Ludovic Chevalier. Chevalier is accused of the gruesome kidnapping, torture, and livestreamed murder of three teenage girls on the encrypted dark web inside illicit pay-per-view chatrooms known as 'red rooms'. Although the prosecution possesses recovered videos documenting the slaughter of two victims, the killer wore a balaclava, leaving just enough circumstantial doubt for Chevalier's defense to exploit. Crucially, the snuff footage of the third and youngest victim, 13-year-old Camille Beaulieu, remains undiscovered by law enforcement.

Obsessively drawn to the case is Kelly-Anne, an aloof fashion model, high-stakes online poker player, and adept coder who sleeps on the pavement outside the Palais de justice every night to secure a coveted seat in the gallery. In the courtroom, she crosses paths with Clémentine, a hyper-emotional young woman and Chevalier groupie convinced of the accused man's total innocence. As the trial unfolds, Kelly-Anne takes the naive Clémentine under her wing, inviting her into her sterile, high-rise apartment.

While Clémentine's fixation is loudly personal and emotionally externalized, Kelly-Anne's motives remain completely opaque. Navigating both the rigidly controlled semiotics of the physical courtroom and the underground economy of the dark web, Kelly-Anne embarks on an increasingly dangerous pursuit to track down the missing third video—blurring the line between detached investigative obsession and disturbing psychological immersion.

Director Pascal Plante conceived Red Rooms as an indictment and psychological examination of society's insatiable appetite for true crime and the macabre. The film deliberately refrains from displaying explicit gore on screen, focusing instead on the spectatorship surrounding atrocity.

The central message explores how modern digital alienation and commodified trauma transform real-life tragedy into detached consumer spectacle. By positioning the protagonist as an ambiguous observer rather than a conventional hero or villain, Plante turns the camera back onto the audience, confronting viewers with their own voyeurism, complicity, and the unsettling psychological gratifications derived from engaging with extreme evil.

Critics and viewers interpret the narrative and Kelly-Anne's actions through three main frameworks:

Released in 2023 and gaining widespread international acclaim, Red Rooms emerged during the peak of mainstream cultural obsession with true-crime podcasts, dramatized serial killer series, and sensationalized legal coverage.

The film achieved critical acclaim at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and swept the Fantasia Film Festival, winning the Cheval Noir for Best Feature, Best Screenplay, Best Score, and Best Performance for Juliette Gariépy, alongside a 96% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. It is widely recognized as a defining modern French-Canadian neo-noir and techno-thriller, showing how disciplined independent cinema can dissect the digital zeitgeist.

Red Rooms received universal praise from critics and audiences for Juliette Gariépy's commanding, impassive performance, Pascal Plante's surgical direction, Vincent Biron's sleek cinematography, and Dominique Plante's nerve-shredding score. Audiences particularly lauded the decision to generate extreme psychological dread without relying on graphic on-screen violence.

Minor criticisms noted the deliberately cold, slow-burn pacing and questioned specific procedural choices, such as delivering the evidence directly to the mother rather than authorities. The courtroom confrontation where Kelly-Anne cosplays as the murdered victim Camille was widely hailed as one of the most provocative and chilling sequences in modern thriller cinema.