Red Rooms Review: The Most Disturbing Horror Movie Of The Year

A chilling, skin-crawling experience, "Red Rooms" is the most disturbing horror movie of the year. No hyperbole here: Pascal Plante's ice-cold thriller left me stunned on more than one occasion. It is a bleak, cutting film that has a way of disquieting your mind with long, lingering shots. Most of these shots are trained on the silent, indecipherable face of star Juliette Gariépy, who is shockingly good here doing so much while saying so little. Gariépy is Kelly-Anne, a French-Canadian model who has become obsessed with an accused serial killer. When she's not on a fashion shoot, playing online poker, or haunting her cold, sparse high-rise apartment — a place where the wind constantly howls outside like voices of the damned — Kelly-Anne is sleeping on the streets outside of the courthouse so she can get a good seat at the trial of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), nicknamed the Demon of Rosemont.

Chevalier stands accused of brutally murdering three teenage girls. Not only that, but the killer also filmed the crimes and uploaded them to a "red room," a dark web urban legend where users can pay bitcoin to watch someone be murdered. Two of the murder videos have been found, while the third has never been recovered. While the suspect wears a mask on film, the Crown Prosecutor contends that experts can confirm Chevalier is the killer, while plenty of more evidence also points towards his guilt. Plante's film makes the clever choice to keep Chevalier at a distance — he has no dialogue in the film; he simply sits silently in court, crossing his legs or checking his nails, seemingly nonplussed. And yet the opening scene does such a masterful job of building up the horrific nature of the crimes that this slight, quiet man seems genuinely threatening. 

Eventually, the murder tapes are played for the court. "Red Rooms" doesn't show us the footage, but we do hear some of it, featuring lots of revving power tools and blood-curdling screams. The lack of visuals somehow makes it all the more terrifying. Without seeing the footage for ourselves, we're forced to imagine it; "Red Rooms" is pushing us to the edge in an almost cruel fashion. As upsetting as these sounds are, "Red Rooms" has more disturbing details up its sleeve, particularly in the way Kelly-Anne begins to behave. I won't dare spoil anything, but there's a moment set in the courtroom that's so hauntingly twisted that it had me groaning in near-disbelief. 

Kelly-Anne isn't the only person obsessed with Chevalier. Also at the courthouse every day is Clémentine (Laurie Babin), but while Kelly-Anne's obsession is more hard to pin-down and quantify, Clémentine's is obvious and pathetic: she's a groupie who sees a kindred spirit in the accused serial killer, believing him to be completely innocent. She's prone to rattling off confused conspiracy theories about how this poor man is being framed for crimes he didn't commit, and makes a fool of herself on more than one occasion. A friendship of sorts forms between Kelly-Anne and Clémentine, and at first, it looks like "Red Rooms" is on the cusp of turning into a darkly comedic buddy comedy about two weirdos who bond over their obsession. Kelly-Anne and Clémentine are an odd couple; Kelly-Anne is cold and quiet, Clémentine can't shut up, and yet they're both inadvertently drawn to a man who stands accused of butchering three young girls.

Women being drawn to serial killers is not an invention of the movies, of course. Serial killers like Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez both drew female groupies of their own, women who would attend their trials and comment on how attractive they were to the press. Obviously, this isn't just a female phenomenon — our culture is obsessed with serial killers, as confirmed by an abundance of true crime podcasts and docuseries. But while I'd wager that most people's fascination with serial killer material is ultimately harmless, "Red Rooms" presents us with Kelly-Anne, who tumbles further and further into a kind of obsession that suggests complete and total collapse. 

It's unsustainable and dangerous, but "Red Rooms" remains deliberately and coldly distant from its inscrutable protagonist. The film isn't judging her, nor is it condoning her actions. It's simply presenting them in an almost clinical fashion, as if the viewers were scientists studying a bizarre specimen under glass. With its Canadian setting and its icy detachment, "Red Rooms" feels cut from the same cloth as a David Cronenberg film — the vibe here is something akin to "Videodrome" meets "Crash," a mash-up of psychosexual horror in which the characters behave in ways that feel completely removed from what we think of as "normal" society. 

The horror genre is flexible, although some movie watchers seem to not quite grasp this concept. Time and time again, I've learned that to some folks, "horror" simply equals "jump scares." And if a movie lacks these particular bursts of adrenaline, some people will broadly proclaim the film in question simply isn't scary. Well, there are no jump scares to be found in "Red Rooms," and yet I contend the film is frequently horrifying. 

So much of the horror on display here arises from the dark places we allow our minds to go. Writer-director Plante plays things very close to the vest, giving us no easy answers. We must grapple with this material. By default, we try to make sense of it all, but healthy logic is impossible to apply here. The events that transpire are outside the norm, and yet at the same time, "Red Rooms" seems to be suggesting that the fringes of society — people who might, say, pay some money to watch a live murder — aren't as fringe as we might hope. 

As Kelly-Anne descends further into the dark web, and begins engaging in one questionable choice after another, we watch in horror. Nothing good can come of these actions, and that makes the film all the more terrifying. Nearly every scene had me on edge, wondering what terrible, unspeakable thing might happen next. You won't see anything gory in "Red Rooms." Nothing is going to jump out of the dark and make you jolt in your seat. But as the film slowly and methodically burns towards its surprising conclusion, your heart will race along with your mind. Do you want to see something scary? Watch "Red Rooms." 

/Film Rating: 9 out of 10

"Red Rooms" opens in select theaters on September 6, 2024.