Juliette Gariépy’s disquieting performance overcomes the more unbelievable elements of this tale of snuff-movie murder rooms
A lead performance of pure sociopathic intensity is what makes this serial-killer horror stand out. It is a movie which never shows the horrific violence on screen and prefers to stay largely within the rhetorical limits of courtroom procedural, though with a shiver of revulsion that could put you in mind of Cronenberg or Refn. Canadian film-maker Pascale Plante writes and directs, and relative newcomer Juliette Gariépy is genuinely unsettling as Kelly-Anne, a fashion model who has become obsessed with the ongoing trial of an alleged serial killer (Maxwell McCabe-Locas). Nicknamed the Demon of Rosemont, he is accused of kidnapping and torturing three teenage girls in a so-called “red room”, an urban-mythic place on the dark web where livestreamed snuff porn can supposedly be watched in exchange for cryptocurrency payment.
Kelly-Anne camps out all night outside Montreal’s Palais de justice – although she always looks very good for someone who’s been sleeping rough – just so she can get a ringside seat in the public gallery. This very beautiful young woman is almost incandescent with her silent, suppressed euphoria at the grotesque horror outlined in the case, and Plante’s camera roams with studied blankness all over the courtroom as the lawyers make their case, pausing to look at the accused, pausing to look at Kelly-Anne herself.
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