Red Rooms ★★★★

Released: 6th September 2024

Director: Pascal Plante

Starring: Juliette Gariepy

Tech thrillers are a tricky thing to compose for this digital age: the openly-admitted government surveillance is so omnipresent that the concept of the “Dark Web” doesn’t instill even a modicum of the fear it did a decade ago. These days, unless a film taps into the TikTok generation’s fear of loneliness, that audience just won’t find any of those thrills particularly engrossing. The climate has changed – and so have the genre films tackling the Y2K terror of the world wide web. What else is there to say about our collective disregard for privacy and virtual voyeurism? Red Rooms approaches this question in an alarmingly terrifying manner: Pascal Plante’s film is a macabre treatise on the culture of endlessly consumed content, parasocial sexual urges, and the intrinsically exploitative nature of true crime media.

In the fall of 2022, Montreal is shaken by the trial of Ludovic Chevalier: a serial killer who butchered three young girls and filmed his murders to sell at Dark Web auctions. Amid countless protests and calls to immediately prosecute the accused, Ludovic has his fair share of devotees. Among those, we meet Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy): a 20-something, internet-literate fashion model, whose fixation on Chevalier is entirely unclear. As the prosecution is looking for the last piece of evidence – a snuff video of the third victim – so is Kelly-Anne, endlessly browsing the darkest corners of the internet.

Whether intentional or not, Plante’s uniquely taut thriller is a well-timed affair: much like Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover for the 2000s or David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for the 2010s, Red Rooms feels like it will define this decade of paranoid tech thrillers. Plante is careful with his cards, as we’re always one step behind Kelly-Anne in her search for truth… or is it pure pleasure she’s seeking? With shades of Verhoeven’s Elle, you’re never quite sure whether the character at the centre is playing herself, or merely toying with the audience.

What starts off as a courtroom drama on the nature of our collective complicity in sensationalized true crime quickly descends into a series of subversive vignettes, following Kelly-Anne and her unlikely companion, Clémentine (Laurie Babin). At first glance, the two women couldn’t be any further apart: Clementine, with her vulnerable child-like naivete and firm belief in Chevalier’s innocence, and Kelly-Anne’s stern, borderline condescending outlook on the nature of the proceedings. The class difference between the two is obvious, as Kelly-Anne’s chic AI-powered flat serves as the most prominent locale for the film’s reveals – largely due to the lead’s ostensible security measures and her fortified desktop PC. Here, Plante’s film seemingly taps into the “screenlife” subgenre: the narratological hints of Unfriended: Dark Web and Profile are all over the computer sequences, yet we (quite literally) never lose sight of Kelly-Anne. She’s always in the reflection of her screen, even more so when we see close-ups of her face as she’s frantically looking up leaked data on the victim’s family. Regardless of her intentions, we’re constantly feeling complicit in this breach of privacy.

Unlike the vast majority of cyber films, the terrifying beauty of Plante’s work lies in its accurate representation of contemporary internet habits. Kelly-Anne looks up “haveibeenpwned” to easily secure access to a number-based house lock, bitcoin payments fund the killer’s twisted “content”, and the Dark Web’s horror feels tangibly, overwhelmingly masculine. It’s a clever structure of perpetual unease that makes Red Rooms so compelling, a thriller of obsession that begs the question: how far is too far in our collective desire for macabre entertainment?