Director: Pascal Plante
Pascal Plante's 2023 Canadian thriller Red Rooms follows a young model whose curiosity about a highly publicized murder trial curdles into something far more consuming.
What is Red Rooms about?
In Montreal, the courtroom proceedings surrounding Ludovic Chevalier draw crowds of reporters and onlookers, but one quiet spectator never misses a session. Kelly-Anne sits through the trial with an unsettling calm, absorbing every detail of the evidence as it's presented. Her interest, which at first looks like ordinary fascination with a sensational case, gradually reveals a different shape. As the proceedings stretch on, she starts searching for pieces of the story the courtroom cannot provide, drifting toward corners of the internet where curiosity and danger sit close together. Plante builds tension less through overt violence than through Kelly-Anne's expression, often blank and occasionally unreadable, leaving the audience to guess how far she is willing to go to complete the picture forming in her mind.
Cast & crew
Juliette Gariepy anchors the film as Kelly-Anne, playing the role with a controlled, almost clinical stillness that keeps her motivations ambiguous until the closing stretch. Laurie Babin appears as another courtroom regular whose more visible reactions contrast sharply with Kelly-Anne's detachment, while Maxwell McCabe-Lokos and Pierre Chagnon round out the trial's legal machinery in smaller but pointed roles. The ensemble largely plays it restrained, letting small gestures and glances carry scenes that could easily have tipped into melodrama in less careful hands.
Context & significance
Red Rooms premiered in 2023 and quickly built a festival reputation for its clinical, procedural take on true-crime fixation rather than the crimes themselves. Shot mostly within courtroom walls and Kelly-Anne's sparse apartment, the film leans on stark digital cinematography to mirror its subject's cold focus. Reviewers have pointed to its restraint compared with typical genre conventions, noting how Plante uses the trial as a lens on how audiences consume violent crime as entertainment. The film holds a 7.1 rating on IMDb and runs 118 minutes, with French dialogue throughout.
Where & how to watch
Red Rooms is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login, presented through a Farsi-friendly interface with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitle options for viewers who prefer either. No extra setup is needed beyond signing in — search the title and press play whenever you're ready.