'Red Rooms' Is the Most Disturbing Film Of the Year

I’ll start out by apologising for that headline: It is, admittedly, a bit of a sleight of hand. Written and directed by Pascal Plante (Nadia, Butterfly), Red Rooms (Les chambres rouges) first played at film festivals all the way back in 2023, debuting in its native Canada later that year, before eventually finding wider release in 2024. I saw it in the final days of December 2024, and I’ve not been able to dislodge it from the deep recess that it burrowed its way into inside my brain since then. It’s by far the most disturbing film that I saw all that year, and I’d wager that I won’t see anything that ousts it from that spot in 2025.

In this psychological thriller about a high-profile serial killer case coming to trial in Montreal, almost-newcomer Juliette Gariépy plays Kelly-Anne, an opaque enigma of a young woman obsessed with the killer and his crimes. Stylistic and thematic echoes of David Fincher abound in Red Rooms’ filmmaking, chiefly manifesting in the highly methodical Kelly-Anne, who lives alone in a compact but fancy high-rise apartment with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, earning a living with online gambling and part-time modelling. Taciturn to the extreme and impossible to read, Kelly-Anne is a formidable presence, frighteningly competent in some areas—hacking and social engineering—yet clumsy (or, more accurately, disinterested) in others like small talk and facial cues.

Kelly-Anne is not alone in the interest she shows in the serial killer trial. The case—centred around a man arrested for creating and distributing videos online of unspeakable things being done to young girls in the eponymous rooms—has had a massive media circus grow up around it. The mainstream media breathlessly follow the developments, both on TV and in print, and an alternative and fringe following has sprung up online too. It’s the twisted nature of the beast that coverage of such nature has created an ecosystem in which the accused killer even has fans of a sort, many of them women, some of whom believe ardently in his innocence. As the trial goes on, Kelly-Anne’s obsession and the lengths she’ll go to to involve herself in it spiral into dangerous territory.

Spelunking in some of the darkest depths of modern humanity, Red Rooms is a grim and patient exercise in rising dread. Long takes in both close-up and at a distance isolate Kelly-Anne in her cold, urban cage, her remarkably controlled expressions serving both to keep the audience at a distance, and to give us tiny glimpses of her inner self. Gariépy appears in almost every scene, managing to create a connection all the while keeping the character’s motives fundamentally inscrutable, even through some truly difficult to watch and morally grey (to say the least!) moments and decisions. It’s an impressive performance. The restraint the actor shows is echoed in the film itself, which doesn’t actually depict any grotesque events, instead letting the reactions of its actors tell the story of the horror at its heart.

It would be reductive to label Red Rooms solely with a ‘cautionary tale of true crime as entertainment’ sticker, but that is an inescapable part of its core message. Yet, like the Tor browser that Kelly-Anne is so fond of, there are multiple layers of possible motive, as well as a chilling ambiguity to much of what happens. A few slightly heavy handed literary allusions threaten to tip the film’s delicate balance, but it just about escapes this fate. Red Rooms might not show the audience Nietzsche’s abyss, but it does have others stare into it, with us glimpsing its reflection in their pupils.