Red Rooms
Director: Pascal Plante
Release year: 2024
Kelly-Anne turns up every day at the trial of a high profile alleged serial killer who is charged with broadcasting on the dark web the torture and murder of three teenage girls. She meets a groupie of the suspect who believes he is innocent, but Kelly-Anne’s motives remain elusive.
Having a main character who lacks empathy is a tricky thing to pull off, but director Pascal Plante and actress Juliette Gariépy do an incredible job of keeping us involved in her unclear quest and guessing at her motivations. She has the mannerisms of someone who might be on the autistic spectrum, and she’s a loner, seemingly a hacker, who loves to take controlled risks. Her sense of morality is different to those around her.
It’s a film about living online today, making a living with software, trading in bitcoin, using the information about us online to hack our emails and our homes. It’s about desensitisation to violence, our cultural love of true crime and serial killers, how our media covers trials, the trauma we carry with us from childhood, and the trauma that can be inflicted on us by the attentions of a psychopath. I couldn’t recommend this film more.