One movie that I feel like I have been hearing about for months is Red Rooms, and sense many people have been sharing their top ten end of the year lists, I have also seen it on most of those as well. So I was very excited when I saw that it was coming to Shudder on January 14th. The problem is, the past year I have struggled with going into movies with too high of expectations and leaving disappointed, but this movie lived up to the hype and is currently in my top 5 of 2024.
The movie takes place in Quebec, so it is mostly in French, and it centers on a gruesome murder trial. Ludovic Chevalier is on trial for murdering three teenage girls, and for filming it and putting it online, and although the movie starts with the opening statements of the trial, it spends most of its time outside of the courtroom following Kelly-Anne and Clementine. Kelly-Anne is a model, who is also a professional online poker player, and she comes across as very reserved. Clementine on the other hand is more vocal and comes off as antsy and anxious, but they are both very interested in the trial. As the story unravels, they slowly unveil their stakes in the trial and why they are so interested, before the whole movie crescendos in a wild way.
The two main women play off each other so well. Clementine is publicly open in believing that Ludovic is not guilty of committing these atrocities, she talks to the news about it, and she even calls into a show to defend him, but no one seems to believe her. Then at the end of the movie, it comes out that despite never meeting him, she was in love with him. Kelly-Anne on the other hand, seems very invested in the actual investigation. During the trial, they kicked out the public, when they showed the video of the girls being brutally murdered, and Kelly-Anne admitted to having seen the videos to Clementine. So despite seeming level headed most of the movie, the audience slowly gets to see that Kelly-Anne has a darker side behind her calm unwavering demeaner. She shows Clementine the videos, and Clementine immediately loses her investment in the trial and flees back home, whereas Kelly-Anne seeks out the missing third video, and continues to go way too far in many other ways.
Kelly-Anne seemingly had it all. She was a model, she made good money playing computer poker, and she knew how to navigate the dark web, but she was willing to throw it all away for the sake of finding out the truth. She had a very nice apartment in a high rise with a great set up inside, but she would go and sleep outside by the court house to make sure she had a spot in the court room, and once word got out that she had been attending the trial, she lost some work, but then she doubled down and dressed as one of the murdered girls to the trial, and then she got dropped by everyone, and if that was not enough, when she was betting on the third video, she literally risked all of her money in a card game, which luckily she won.Then she spent the Bitcoin equivalent to over $400,000 to buy the video. Wild!
The whole movie works as a criticism on the true crime podcast wave. As seen in the previous paragraph, people become far too invested in these stories, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to just get more information, even if it means crossing all the lines. It also works as a good reminder as to the fact that there are real families involved in these true crime cases. The public may become overly invested, and that can spill into the family’s life thus causing them more pain and trauma, like when Kelly-Anne dressed as one of the murder girls to the trial. It is easy to become disconnected to the actual tragedy that has occurred when listening to a podcast, but those are real people who had their lives cut short. It is literally preying on trauma.
The other area in which this movie excelled in was not showing the gore but still being disturbing. Most scary movies do not shy away from gore and showing something horrific, but despite the trial being about gruesome murders, the most we got from them was the sounds of the videos, but that was enough. They also showed the aftermath of how it disturbed the people who watched it. One of the parents had to be stretchered out of the court room after passing out from watching it. After watching two of the videos, Clementine stopped going to the trial, she no longer wanted anything to do with it, and she was visually disturbed. It was also disturbing how into Kelly-Anne was. She was willing to dress up like one of the dead girls and go to the trial, and she even broke into the girl’s house dressed that way. It was very uncomfortable.
Despite the movie being 2 hours, the pace was perfect. It never felt like it was long. The story is completely engrossing, but the one aspect that always plays a key role in the tempo is the music. The music was never overpowering in this, and they were selective of when they played the score or whatever suspenseful noise they used, but when they played it, it was effective.
However, I am unsure if I actually consider this a horror movie. I would like to call it the best horror movie of the year, but I think it actually classifies more as a thriller. As mentioned, there is no showing of the gore, and although the film is very intense, it never scared me. I would put my hands up to my face, but not out of fear, but out of tension. It makes you feel uncomfortable, but not fearful. It did not have scares like Oddity superbly succeeded at this year, and it did not have creative murderous acts like In a Violent Nature, so sadly I think this goes into the thriller category instead of horror, but I am okay with people claiming it as a prestige horror, because the more people that get invested into horror the better.
Overall, this was an incredible film! It was well worth the wait, and it is a genuine tragedy that I was not able to see this in theaters, and it did help kick off an incredible week of cinema for me. This week they finally released many of the best picture contenders into theaters, so I had the chance to see Sing Sing, The Brutalist, and The Nickle Boys as well. All of these movies are contenders for my top ten list for the year. I highly recommend watching Red Rooms, horror fan or not. It is masterful storytelling, and it will keep you entertained the whole time. Also the performances are great. I had never heard of Juliette Gariépy, but I will gladly watch any new movie she is in now! 4 Stars and it should be a best picture nominee!
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