2025 Top Ten List #9 Red Rooms (Les Chambres Rouges)

 

Writer/director Pascal Plante

RED ROOMS (Les Chambres Rouges)                     A-                                                     Canada  (118 mi)  2023  d: Pascal Plante

An unsettling psychological cyber-thriller with horror elements, a character study, and a scintillating courtroom drama that exposes the public’s morbid curiosity with serial killers. This is the kind of film that grabs you by the throat and won’t let go, keeping you intrigued from start to finish, as the filmmaker does an excellent job sustaining the suspense, feeling a connection to those paranoid conspiracy thrillers from the 70’s, like Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975), and Sydney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), all of which feature dynamic lead performances.  This film is no different, with the camera holding tight to the face of Juliette Gariépy as Kelly-Anne, who provides a positively riveting performance, rarely uttering a word, keeping her thoughts close to herself, where you continually wonder what her interest is in this high-profile courtroom case of accused 40-year old murderer Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), who is suspected of having kidnapped, tortured, sexually abused, murdered, and dismembering three teenage girls aged between thirteen and sixteen.  Making matters worse, he live-streamed the murders in a so-called Red Room, or torture chamber, over the Dark web to anonymous viewers who were willing to pay large sums of cryptocurrency for the gruesome experience, exposing a dehumanizing capitalist system that exploits extreme brutalization for profit, opening up our eyes to the impunity of cybercriminals.  Tapes exist for two of the murders, but not the youngest, with forensic experts able to determine the identity of the murderer from behind his covered mask.  Nicknamed the Demon of Rosemont by the media, after the borough of Montreal where the crimes occurred, the trial receives widespread television coverage, where the opening courtroom scene is beautifully shot in one long take by Vincent Biron, whose exquisite, formally sophisticated work creates a sensual elegance to what we’re witnessing.  Despite the horrific nature of the crime, that becomes purely secondary, as our real interest lies in the reactions of others, specifically Kelly-Anne, a deeply ambiguous and opaque figure whose total absence of emotion is startling, living in sterile yet spotless opulence in an upscale high-rise apartment with no furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, where she is seen attending the trial each day, yet the real beauty of the film is that her interest in the case remains a mystery.  At first we think she may be a reporter, but then we see her do some chic modeling for a fashion shoot, which is like a burst of combustible energy that comes out of nowhere, with quick cuts accompanied by furiously explosive music, where the heavily atmospheric musical score is composed by the director’s brother, Dominique Plante.  Kelly-Anne’s complete isolation is striking, exhibiting ghost-like qualities, where her spectral presence feels haunting, as she’s very used to being in control and only interacts with the world by proxy, remaining highly introverted and keeps to herself, where among her idiosyncrasies, she drinks protein smoothies, works out to Chloe Ting videos, plays squash by herself, loving the feel of smashing the ball to relieve tension, while the only light in her apartment comes from the dual computer screens, as she never turns on the lights.  Something of a computer wizard, she’s modeled somewhat from the fictional character of Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson’s immensely popular Millennium series, an anti-social computer hacker with a photographic memory, where the first part of the series was directed by Swedish director Niels Arden Oplev in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2009), later remade in the U.S. by David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011).  The similarities between the characters are striking.   

Joining fellow Québecois filmmakers Denys Arcand, Denis Villeneuve, and Xavier Dolan, Plante is a Canadian filmmaker from Québec City, not well known even in Canada, who was also a national-level competitive swimmer as a teenager, unsuccessfully trying out for Canada’s swimming team for the 2008 Summer Olympics held in Beijing, now working primarily out of Montreal, which was the setting a decade ago of the highly publicized trial of one of Canada’s most notorious killers, Luka Magnotta (the Magnotta video), who was accused in the particularly gruesome Murder of Jun Lin.  Some of the details of that incident inform this film, as the accused posted a sadistically graphic video online, while he also similarly sat in the courtroom behind a glass enclosure, never uttering a single word.  Cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom then, so hand-drawings were all the public had to go on during the trial coverage, leaving a lot to the imagination.  That may have actually spawned the idea for this film, as well as movies like Michael Haneke’s measured and precise depictions of violence in Benny's Video (1992), Funny Games (1997), and Caché (Hidden) (2005), and also Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover (2002), filmmakers who are extremely conscious about the psychological impact of the violence they depict.  This ambitiously complex film has a similar psychological mindset, drawing us into this disturbing and unsettling drama, yet leaving most to the imagination, as the worst remains offscreen, yet what we’re left with is the enigma and personal obsession of Kelly-Anne, who is meticulous to a fault, one of the most mysteriously intriguing characters seen in years, onscreen nearly the entire time, though we know so little about her.  While Kelly-Anne is aloof and quiet, she meets another friend in court, Clémentine (Laurie Babin), who is nervously chatty, just a bundle of nerves, an overly naïve and mentally unstable Ludovic Chevalier groupie, much like Charles Manson’s groupies, who swears he is innocent, claiming most of the technological evidence used against him could have been hacked, believing he is being framed.  She even goes on camera for the TV news reporters and passionately defends him, claiming the arrest and trial are the real atrocity.  Kelly-Anne befriends her, but they are polar opposites, as the penniless Clémentine hitchhiked into the city and has been sleeping in bus stations, with no visible means of support, while Kelly-Anne’s apartment is immaculate, filled with state of the art technology, including her own custom-programmed, hacker impenetrable AI voice assistant named Guinivère, basically her eyes and ears that responds to voice commands, and even tells jokes, when asked, arguably her best friend in the world.  Her computer hacking skills are on government intelligence level, as she’s easily able to navigate spaces most of us never even knew existed, and do it in a state of utter calm, like a Zen state, while unlike most every other movie, the expressionistic filming of the computer browsing adds complex levels to the intrigue, literally drawing our attention to the intensity of the experience, where the human interaction with the computer screens feels real.  It turns out she’s also a professional online poker player, using all the mathematical algorithms to ensure the greatest opportunity of success, wasting little time on low percentage hands, where she’s able to focus her attention with an uncanny ability of recall, as nothing slips by her.  For this reason, her relationship with the downtrodden, anxiety-ridden Clémentine is puzzling, as they have nothing in common except the trial, yet the pair have been accused of being groupies by the mother of a victim, “You’re spitting on our daughter’s grave,” finding their presence in the courtroom revolting, like a weird cult worshipping at the feet of the killer.  

Listed as the #1 film of the year by The Ringer: Adam Nayman: The Best Movies of 2024, Plante seems to be fascinated with the idea of a female version of Travis Bickle from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), an obsessively dark loner whose motivations remain unclear, suggesting cinema is filled with male characters like that, while ignoring the same qualities in women.  Perhaps a female version of the Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) character in Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000), or a strange descendent from David Cronenberg’s eerie cult horror classic VIDEODROME (1983), what distinguishes this film is what happens when reality blurs with Kelly-Anne’s own morbid fantasies, growing increasingly bizarre as she enters morally dubious territory, where she goes down a dark path to seek the final piece of the puzzle.  A cryptic horror study of both a serial killer and a pathological protagonist with a fanatical fascination with the murderer, she’s like an adrenaline junkie who gets off on venturing into taboo territory, paying extraordinary attention to detail, the film intellectually examines the border between delusion, reality, and wish fulfillment.  When the courtroom is cleared to show the tortuous videos exclusively to the jury, Clémentine, in particular, is upset, believing they might show evidence which could exonerate Ludovic.  She’s positively dumbfounded to hear that Kelly-Anne already has seen them multiple times and has access to the videos, contending they only confirm his guilt, as they contain the exact same physical attributes and mannerisms that are unique to him, so she not only believes he committed the crimes, but may also admire him for the savvy way it was carried out.  Kelly-Anne invites Clémentine into her home to watch them together, bathed in red light, shocked and wretchedly repulsed by the brutality of what she sees and the agonizing screams she hears, bewildered at how utterly horrifying it is, reducing her to tears, deciding then and there to buy a bus ticket and return back home, losing all interest in the case.  Her disappearance, however, triggers something in Kelly-Anne, leaving more expansive room for her to literally dominate the screen with devastating results, becoming intimately familiar with the Tor browser in her pursuit of that final video of the third girl.  It’s remarkably astute filmmaking, as it takes us on a mesmerizing journey, so sterile and sleek, moving with a glacial coldness, matching her cold and pragmatic attitude, so completely anonymous as she literally cyber-stalks and infiltrates the secret lives of unsuspecting others, becoming an unhealthy and perhaps uncontrollable psychotic fixation, hacking into their most private and seemingly protected personalized spaces, including their homes, where the relative ease of access for her is alarming, opening our eyes to suspicious behavior rarely seen in movies, yet expressed so quietly and poetically.  This film doesn’t have the critical acclaim and festival circuit notoriety of Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d'une chute) (2023), but it’s far more successful in lingering in the viewer’s imagination afterwards, embedded somewhere in the deep recesses of the brain.     

With vague, mythological The Lady of Shalott Arthurian references, which is Kelly-Anne’s online username and computer screensaver image, some of this resembles the murky world of dreams, veering completely out of the ordinary, changing the entire trajectory of the film, bearing something in common with Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover (2002), which at the time of its release was remarkably insightful about disturbing uses of modern technology, and now twenty years later, as technology has only become more advanced, our voyeuristic addiction to social media has grown in equal proportions, where people are more plugged-in than ever before, where the isolation of the Covid pandemic may have inadvertently contributed to this phenomenon.  In this day and age we are becoming increasingly desensitized to online violence, where it is not uncommon to witness smartphone videos of mass shootings, mutilated and dismembered victims of genocide in the Congo (funded by the sale of cellphones, Opinion | Death by Gadget in Congo), ISIS beheadings, unending bombings and perpetual starvation in Gaza, or shooting fatalities at the hands of the police, as these images are literally everywhere.  It’s disgusting that the horrifying methods of torture and murder live-streamed over the Internet reveal there are people who are crazy and wealthy enough to watch snuff films as they happen, suggesting there is not only a morbid fascination but a market price for this kind of heinous crime, raising questions about what that means in our technologically obsessed society.  As revolting as that may be, it’s a much smaller scale than the massive horrors inflicted by technology and the unethical billionaires who run questionable web platforms, routinely spewing unchecked lies and misinformation on a massive scale, including Nazi propaganda, while white supremacist ideology has not only re-infected our national discourse but it’s become our official national policy, where our narcissistic obsession with social media got a racist moron elected President of the United States, literally whitewashing and rewriting the past as if he wants to make the Confederacy great again, and the dangers he is inflicting on the world are just getting started, where some of his pardons have already cheapened the rule of law.  It’s a disturbing trend that has a major impact in our lives, delving deeper into a spiritual and social abyss that we may never come out of, affecting so many innocent and unsuspecting people, yet few films are daring enough to show us the hellish side of the Internet, where the harmful effects of technology have rarely been more scrutinized.  Never spelling anything out, allowing each viewer to make up their own minds about the shadowy implications, it’s a staggering piece of filmmaking, hugely provocative, disturbing and intoxicating at the same time, elegant in its austere detachment, taking us into the darkest corners of the human soul, where no one who sees it will be left unaffected.   

Cloud (Kuraudo)

 

Writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa

director on the set with Masaki Suda

CLOUD (Kuraudo)                B                                                                                                 Japan  (124 mi)  2024  d: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Now a death game begins.                                                                                                           —a dissatisfied customer

From the maker of CURE (1997), PULSE (2001), BRIGHT FUTURE (2003), Tokyo Sonata (2008), and Before We Vanish (Sanpo suru shinryakusha) (2017), all very different movies, known for making self-reflective psychological thrillers, where a common thread is the role technology plays in the modern world, playing on the collective fears of Japanese society, yet he never introduces special effects, preferring to use the classic tools of cinema over traditional American special effects and big stars, placing an emphasis on sound, lighting, photography, and editing combined with highly effective storytelling.  Noted for his psychological films that often focus on ambiguous narratives that accentuate the inner existential turmoil of characters and their search for meaning, Kurosawa is also known as one of the more intelligent and technically proficient filmmakers in the world today, yet he continues to experiment with new genres and styles, drawn by the idea of making an action thriller, where his contemporary work is just as thought-provoking as his distinctive earlier work.  Returning to a familiar theme of technology being a disruptive force, representing the emotional emptiness of modernity, this avoids the supernatural element of his earlier films, replaced in this instance by a scathing critique of capitalism, where an economy of exploitation causes a loss of identity, exploring the theme of media-amplified alienation, turning into a karma film, as it so prominently features cause and effect, with deceptive business practices leading to violent retributions, yet when that payback finally arrives, it’s not at all what we anticipate.  With an equal amount of oppressive mundanity and perverse amusement, this is a haunting change-of-life experience with lingering effects.  Stylishly subversive, yet also bold and unpredictable, there’s a sociopathic edge to each character that keeps viewers on edge, unsure of what’s about to happen, bearing some similarities to Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist (Aku wa sonzai shinai) (2023), which may not be surprising since Hamaguchi studied under Kurosawa at the Tokyo University of the Arts.  The idea for this story began in 2018, and may have originated with Takahiro Shiraishi, the “Twitter Killer,” who murdered and dismembered nine people in 2017, most of them young women, contacting his victims through social media, primarily Twitter, after they had posted about suicidal thoughts, luring them to his apartment under the guise of helping them, but then proceeded to rape and kill his victims, and was executed by hanging in Japan on June 27, 2025.  The Internet, from its dial-up infancy, was once viewed with such promise as this mystical and magical thing, thinking it was the answer to so many problems, a research tool that could access resource information with instantaneous results, without having to trek to the library, while things could get done so much faster and with greater accuracy, including correspondence with friends or business associates anywhere in the world, yet it also has a tendency to isolate and alienate people from general society, lowering the quotient for having to have social skills or good manners.  Over time we’ve become addicted to cellphones and social media, where an all-consuming narcissistic obsession has fueled an anonymous hate culture where no rules apply, as there is no referee or moderator to intervene, so people have free reign to do or say whatever dumb thing they please, however racist, homophobic, hateful, or misinformed, where you don’t need a moral compass to intentionally smear someone’s character, impugn anyone who’s different, or even invent fictitious scenarios or conspiracy theories that spread like wildfires (Hate culture is ruining the internet), creating waves of invisible and unwanted pressure just to get through each and every day. 

Screened out of competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2024, this film centers upon Ryosuke Yoshii, played with alienation and detachment by Masaki Suda, who voiced the Heron in Hayao Miyazaki’s latest The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) (2023), viewed as an ambitiously young but directionless factory worker from Tokyo who builds an illegitimate side business of black market reselling, operating “on impulse and instinct,” cornering the market by picking up merchandise on the cheap and then reselling it online under a pseudonym at exorbitant prices, impervious to the effect this has on others, cheating buyers and sellers alike, who feel they got swindled.  The film effectively shows how the digital frontier has infiltrated our lives and become a domain for our most troubling and malicious tendencies, a world where human relationships have been reduced to transactions.  Initially living in a cramped apartment with his girlfriend Akiko, played by Kotone Furukawa, from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 #10 Film of the Year Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Gûzen to sôzô) (2021), Yoshii decides to move to an undisclosed larger location out of the city, attempting to remain anonymous from disgruntled victims who are attempting to track him down.  Refusing to join the new business of his school friend Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), who helped bring him into the online resale business, while also turning down a promotional opportunity from his boss Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), telling him, “I’m just unassertive.  It only looks like I’m committed,” he becomes more and more disconnected from the world around him, losing all interest in anything except his bank account, and even avoids his relationship with Akiko while hiring a devoted assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), to help expand the business.  In a sly turn of events, the perpetually bored Akiko comes on to Sano, but he curiously rebuffs her advances with surprising resolve.  What stands out is the way Kurosawa visually expresses the online sale, where the computer becomes a central character, revealed in a very cinematic manner, creating anticipation and suspense, filling the screen with items for sale, all meticulously listed in ordered columns, changing color as they’re purchased, literally coming alive as customers express an interest in his merchandise one item at a time, ultimately becoming the realization of all his hard work and dreams, Clip from Cloud directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi YouTube (2:17).  But Kurosawa has something else in mind, as this isn’t an entrepreneurial success story, but something else altogether, a glacially paced thriller with unexpected twists and turns near the end, leaving viewers in the dark about where this is going, portraying the hidden face of the Internet and the anonymous people who hide behind the screens, pushing every trace of humanity aside in order to get what they want, becoming an exploration of the dark edges of our society, where this is a “The Internet will steal your soul movie,” with cautionary warnings about the kind of world this is becoming.  Going against the grain of a traditional Japanese work ethic, where working in solidarity with an entire team is the business model for achieving security and success, Yoshii is something of a lone wolf, an independent contractor who mostly displays feelings of ambivalence and uncertainty, yet a firm believer in opportunism and his own compulsion, with an allegiance to no one but himself. This puts him at odds with the status quo, but may reflect the perspective of a younger generation seeking quicker, more instantaneous methods of success, more reliant upon technology and their computer prowess, driven by wanting to see results now.   

Elegantly shot by Yasuyuki Sasaki, who worked on Hamaguchi’s Asako I & II (Netemo sametemo) (2018), using long takes and abrupt cuts, making exquisite use of empty space, where characters are often shot engulfed in their surroundings, with musical composer Takuma Watanabe adding his own eerie stylishness, with Shinji Watanabe’s positively brilliant sound design, Kurosawa has staged a generational divide choreography pitting the old ways against the new, which proceeds in a very slow manner, taking a while to get started, showing a quiet detachment, but viewers need to get acclimated to just what kind of business Yoshii is running, quitting his job at the factory, going all-in on his own business acumen, where an overly materialistic Akiko seems to be drawn to him over his ability to make money, no questions asked, but he starts clashing with both his assistant and girlfriend over his increasingly obsessive work habits.  What’s important in this film is that it features ordinary people leading ordinary lives.  A frustrated Akiko never figures out how to operate an espresso machine, supposedly an upgrade over a regular coffee maker, and eventually moves out when she is so completely neglected by his preoccupation with his business, while Yoshii also fires Sano after discovering he used his computer, with his assistant trying to warn him that others are angered by his questionable business ethics, or lack thereof, like stirring up a hornet’s nest, completely dismissing this notion that he needs to do a better job concealing his identity online, but this insider access feels too close for comfort and creates friction, especially when Sano refuses to be fired, claiming he’s only looking out for Yoshii’s interests.  Yoshii, on the other hand, can’t tell whether the threats are real or imagined, though there is a trail of random incidents left behind like breadcrumbs.  None of this sounds particularly dramatic or cinematic, but the filmmaker cleverly reveals only the barest outlines of a story, establishing a rhythm of disorientation and dread, where there is an outpouring of angry resentment against Yoshii, as people want to bring him down, driven by greed, hatred, self-interest, and desire, trying to follow his computer footprint, initially with no success, but an online forum produces his address (Yoshii inadvertently allowed his address to be seen on his phone during a bus ride), so a group bands together to go after him, revealed with such a remarkable economy of means, where an open door changes the entire trajectory of the film, veering into a cold thriller with a dark, satirical edge, CLOUD by Kurosawa Kiyoshi – Official clip 1 | #venezia81 ... YouTube (1:11).  Kurosawa always does more with less, which distinguishes him as an innovative filmmaker, making the most out of a seemingly innocuous situation, as it makes little sense for his former boss to show up ominously outside his place in the dead of night, adding an element of lingering creepiness, as we don’t really know why, CLOUD by Kurosawa Kiyoshi – Official clip | #venezia81 Fuori ... YouTube (1:37), but this soon escalates into the horror mode, as a swindler drama morphs into a standard thriller, shifting into a home invasion mode before turning into a bleak­ly fun­ny, full-blown action movie.  When it becomes apparent people are after him, Yoshii escapes into the woods to avoid a vengeful lynch mob that is out to get him.  Just when he thinks he has eluded them, he suddenly finds himself surrounded and kidnapped by a gang of disgruntled people armed to the teeth wanting to exact revenge, all with warped reasons for getting involved, where it gets confusing who they all are, a gangster, apparently, who joins forces with his former bosses and a few petty revenge seekers, leaving him with few options. 

Tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse, a man with a blowtorch intends to burn Yoshii alive and stream it online for profit, becoming some sort of gruesome revenge spectacle, an exaggerated overreaction to be sure, but they represent a Greek chorus of anger and resentment, people who have been easily manipulated, misled, and taken advantage of, powerless and seemingly without a voice, yet here they’re given a platform to exact retribution, but more surprises await, as things don’t go exactly as planned, where the warehouse format may remind some of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992).  Kurosawa interjects a few unforeseen obstacles in the form of Sano, his misunderstood and completely unappreciated, and fired, assistant who tracks him down by the GPS on his phone, turning out to be a former yakuza, who even after his release considers it his natural duty to defend his employer, turning into a Charles Bronson vigilante who intends to exact justice.  Coming out of nowhere, the quietly polite Sano turns into the X-factor, exhibiting surprising resourcefulness, stalking and killing the kidnappers with astonishing efficiency, rescuing his former boss who he still swears allegiance to, as if he never left his former position, combining forces to track down the remaining few that continue to pose a threat.  Yoshii is placed in the position of a combatant with a gun in his hand, completely bewildered how he found himself in this position, but what he’s called upon to do is shoot to kill in order to save his own life, revealing in no uncertain terms that it’s either kill or be killed, a metaphor for the cutthroat capitalist business landscape where it’s the Wild West out there, with real life gunslingers, dripping with a sense of paranoia and dread, with potentially violent costumers lurking around every shadowy corner, reminding us what unchecked capitalism looks like (The rise of end times fascism | Far right (US)).  This scenario references the Sam Peckinpah film STRAW DOGS (1971), where the meek husband of a violently raped woman turns into a fanatically-driven killer to exact justice.  Akiko even makes a late appearance, but her motives are suspicious, just like everyone else.  With a surreal ending that has a heavily absurdist literary No Exit aspect, Sano and Yoshii drive off into an apocalyptic orange-colored landscape, like falling into the abyss, with Sano professing his primary purpose is to make more money, where nothing else matters, as we hear a doomed Yoshii mutter under his breath, “So this is how you get into Hell.”  Probing the depths of human deception and depravity with an unblinking gaze, Kurosawa’s film is challenging in an untraditional way, offering ruminations on how our online preoccupations are draining peo­ple of their human­i­ty, as Yoshii and Sano form a symbiotic connection with an ambiguous future together. The title reflects the intangible, nebulous nature of the Internet where digital interactions and transactions occur in a vast, interconnected space, where things can be ephemeral and difficult to grasp, as this insightful satire of online capitalism and hate culture exposes a virtual world spilling out into the real world where violent incidents can occur for seemingly no reason whatsoever, as petty grudges and frustrations are blown way out of proportion.  The Internet, which can both connect people and become a catalyst for conflict, magnifies the worst in us, mirroring the endless rage that social media stokes, as virtual anger inevitably spills out into the physical world, something we commonly see every day.  While the Internet brings about the end of the world in PULSE, so eerily ahead of its time and prescient in its mixture of techno-horror and social commentary, we face the teetering fragility of this future at our own peril.    

Видео Cloud {Kuraudo} Masaki Suda-Kotone Furukawa ... entire film may be seen with English subtitles on YouTube (2:04:02)