Overlook Film Festival 2024 – There’s been such a glut of true crime content over the last few years that it’s impossible to keep track. For whatever reason, there’s a segment of the population that’s simply fascinated with serial killers. Writer/director Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms explores a model’s obsession with a high-profile serial killer in Montreal. It makes for an unnerving feature that doesn’t need to show the grisly details to have an effect.

Juliette Gariépy plays Kelly-Anne. She looks like one of Ludovic Chevalier’s (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) victims, all of which were young women. Kelly-Anne attends every trail date, as Ludovic sits behind glass, not uttering a single word. Within the opening 15 minutes, the prosecutor describes, in stark detail, the horrific and torturous acts committed against the victims. It all paints quite the visual without ever actual showing anything. This is how Plante’s film operates. The murders are never shown, but viewers do see the reactions. Kelly-Anne’s obsession grows to the point where she surfs the dark web to find the snuff videos created. Each night, she sits alone in her darkened apartment, and she’s especially interested in tracking down a missing video of a 13-year-old victim.

Kelly-Anne’s fascination with the high-profile trial leads her to a strange sort of friendship with Clementine (Laurie Babin). She has her own sort of obsession, utterly convinced that Ludovic is innocent, even if all evidence points to the contrary. It’s their infatuation with the same serial killer that puts Clementine and Kelly-Anne in touch with each other, though neither ever really admits why they care so much about the trial. Eventually, Clementine gets sucked into Kelly-Anne’s dark web world, and when the duo watches some of the videos together, the camera pans in on their faces and reactions, as audio, mostly of the girls screaming, echoes. It’s one of the most chilling sequences in the film.

I do suspect that this film may frustrate some viewers. Kelly-Anne is tough to decode. Why does she care so much about the case? Is it morbid fascination? Does she actually imagine being one of Ludovic’s victims? Does she wonder what it would be like to kill? The film never really arrives at any answers. It seems like Clementine has a crush on Ludovic, but Kelly-Anne’s motives are murky at best. In that regard, this film never gives any answers as to why people are so obsessed with serial killers. Instead, it’s a psychological thriller and puzzling character study. Still, this one is worth a watch for Gariépy’s performance alone.

While Red Rooms is a slow burn, its last ten minutes do feel like a payoff for patience. Before that final act, it’s quite an unsettling trip watching Kelly-Anne fall further and further into the dark web, pulling Clementine with her. Red Rooms is unlike the excess of serial killer films out there. In fact, this feature isn’t really about the murderer. Instead, it’s about those fascinated with killers. It manages to be disturbing without showing much of anything.

7 out of 10