Red Rooms

Red Rooms (Les Chambres rouges, 2023) is Pascal Plante's crime thriller, ready to watch online on iFILM. A fashion model and sharp online poker player, Kelly-Anne sleeps on the sidewalk outside a Montreal courthouse just to claim a seat each morning at a murder trial.

The accused is Ludovic Chevalier, charged with torturing and killing young women on camera in dark-web "red rooms." Why Kelly-Anne is drawn to this is the film's slow, creeping question. Juliette Gariépy plays her almost wordlessly — a flat stare and icy composure that reveal neither pity nor thrill. Beside her sits Clémentine, a starstruck fan of the killer played by Laurie Babin, everything the lead is not.

Plante shoots with barely any score and no on-screen violence at all: the dread lives in sound design, in long static shots of the courtroom, and in whatever your own mind fills in. It's a cold psychological study of obsession and our pull toward other people's nightmares. Stream Red Rooms (2023) online on iFILM.