Real world inspirations and dark web folklore converge in Red Rooms, the third feature from Quebecois filmmaker Pascal Plante that has conjured much buzz since its U.S. theatrical release last month. Named after the fabled sinister backdrop of covertly circulated online snuff videos, the film dissects our culture’s obsession with gorey details.

As the first day of a shocking murder trial unfolds in a Montreal courthouse, the devilishly striking Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) is first in line to snag one of a handful of seats available to the public. The man on trial, bald and lanky Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), is accused of broadcasting the separate murders of three schoolgirls on the anonymous Tor network. While two of the videos are slated to be presented to the jury, the one containing footage of Camille Beaulieu’s murder has never been traced by police. In fact, all that has been identified of her post-mortem was a piece of her mandible, with braces still attached to a string of teeth.

Completely consumed by the case, Kelly-Anne spends all of her spare time outside of the courtroom browsing illicit corners of the internet for intel on Chevalier, his victims and their families. Perhaps the only person more invested in the trial is Clementine (Laurie Babin), a young woman who spent all of her spare cash to travel to the city in order to cheer Chevalier on from the sidelines, who she believes has been wrongfully prosecuted.

Both women are bewitched by Chevalier and the killings he stands accused of, though their moral compasses never quite align. While professional model (and skilled online poker player) Kelly-Anne turns out to possess a steel-lined stomach for human suffering, the seemingly crude Clementine operates from a place of intense empathy. Their common interest nevertheless forges a bond between the two women, who must confront just how far they are willing to go to support their own suspicions.

Although Plante is opposed to name-dropping the real-life Montreal murderer who undoubtedly served as an inspiration, his film is actively responding to how that case proliferated a wave of true crime “content.” As opposed to absorbing tasteless, slickly-packaged faux-docs about a notorious killer, the act of watching Red Rooms involves an uncomfortable amount of self-reflection: how do we collectively allow violence to corrode our compassion?

I spoke with Plante via Zoom on the occasion of Red Rooms hitting VOD. Below, we discuss how the writer-director recruited consultants to shape the “terminally online” narrative, why it appears that women gravitate toward violence and the process of developing his next “folk horror”-adjacent project.

Filmmaker: This is the second feature you’ve made with producer Dominique Dussault. Can you detail your collaborative approach? I know that you both conceived this project together, so it seems that you’re creatively intertwined.

Plante: She is a key creative collaborator that I’ve had for the past 10 years, because she also produced some of my short films back in 2014. During COVID, we actually co-wrote a screenplay for another film entirely, which we are going to keep the ball rolling on. It’s a period film, so very different [from Red Rooms]. She’s always been extremely creative. She’s the first reader of all the screenplays that I write. She’s the only one that I really want to appeal to, in a sense. If she’s on board, then we’re good to go.

The vague idea of Red Rooms actually came from our discussions. She came up with the [question], “How come there aren’t films about the fans of killers?” I think it’s extremely pertinent to think about that as a societal case study. But [Red Rooms] was left on ice for a long time. We only brought that idea back from the dead after we found out that our period film would be a bit too ambitious and we would need to make a film in between. I went solo and did all of my research. I intertwined the dark web stuff and the idea of interactive crimes in order for the “groupie character” to be very active in the narrative.

When [Dominique and I] have to edit, we make it very efficient. We always discuss things together. She’s also the only producer on the film. When we see films in the U.S. or in Europe, there are so many producers—so many exec producers, so many associate producers. We always kind of laugh when we look at credits where it’s, like, 12 producers. Meanwhile she’s doing all of that work alone. But we’re quick on our feet this way, which is also a plus. And we do what we call a “soft prep,” even before pre-production. We both do a lot before we actually have the team roll in. We do location scouting together, we do auditions really early in the process. So we start very together, but very alone.

Filmmaker: Clearly, the film takes some inspiration from a highly-publicized trial that took place in Montreal back in 2014. While that case similarly featured a video that was played for jurors, several components were changed. In particular, the accused in your film is charged with targeting white, middle-class schoolgirls. What drew you to portraying a case—and an online demand—involving this specific demographic of victim?

Plante: In the promotion of the film, we never want to piggyback on the killer you’re mentioning. That’s why I didn’t mention him. I actually made sure that the killer in our film was very fictional. Of course, this [case] “marks our spirits,” which is an expression in French. Everybody remembers it. In Montreal, this is a super intense, mediatized part of our history. Yes, [Red Rooms] does feature videos, but the one in real-life is very much about narcissism. He already has his Netflix show, anyway, so he won. If he’s a narcissistic asshole, then we’re a bit complicit whenever we watch that. But the video itself was seen hundreds of thousands of times every day. Even back then, I was fascinated. I didn’t see the video myself, but I was fascinated by the fact that so many people did. It felt like everyone had a friend or somebody close to them who actually did watch it out of morbid curiosity. But this is fucked up, because we dehumanize the victim in the process. It’s just about FOMO and wanting to be in the know, but that’s very ethically dubious. Even back in 2014, I was very intrigued by this phenomenon. Of course, there might be a biological component: we sometimes want to look danger in the face and be able to potentially recognize it. So maybe that’s why we’re a bit attracted to that, but there’s more to say. The killer in our film is very different in the sense that he’s very banal. He gives the people what they want. He even says in the courtroom that he picks the victims just based on the potential popularity of that kind of “content.” So it’s very much supply and demand in the most banal, capitalistic sense, you know?

Filmmaker: Even the name of the video in the film, along the lines of “13-year-old girl’s sad, sad day” comments on our society’s obsession with not who these victims are, but what they provide in terms of entertainment value. What do you think the concept of young women as victims says about that point you’re making about supply and demand in a capitalist economy?

Plante: We had to walk that fine line to make something that is ethically okay. But also, how much more violence against women should we see in our entertainment? If we banalize it, then it kind of normalizes it. I was very aware of that [question]. Going back to Dominique, she’s always someone who helps to recenter my gaze if we feel like, “Okay, we might be a bit exploitative here.” Even when we were doing the sound design of the snuff video, it’s super easy to get bloodthirsty. I don’t know what it is, we just want more. I was telling [sound designer Olivier Calvert], “More blood. I want the drill louder.” And I took a step back and thought, “Did we go too far?”

But to answer your question—which is super complex and I wouldn’t be able to answer directly—this [demographic of victim] would be considered the “gold standard” but also way more dangerous [to target]. Sometimes homeless people or prostitutes disappear, but they don’t make the news. In that way, it suits [Chevalier], because in his weird mindset of supply and demand it’s all about the myth. Even him painting the garage red and playing on the troll/4chan internet culture just feeds that beast. So of course he would target the ones whose mothers will shake heaven and hell to be in the news. That [mythologizes] them even more than maybe a random lower-income prostitute.

Filmmaker: I think that the film is very clever about its interrogation of how women consume and obsess over true crime. Your lead, Juliette Gariépy, elaborated in a recent Reddit AMA thread that she did extensive research on what draws women to murderers, particularly those who’ve been convicted. I want to know a bit more about the conversations you may have had with the majority-female cast on this topic, as well as your own perspective as a man.

Plante: There are always degrees of fascination. On a very broad scale, we are all a bit fascinated by it. There’s this “just can’t look away” thing, you know? If you see a car crash or people fighting, you look at it, if only to step aside.

But Juliette was maybe a bit more into true crime podcasts. Not to put words in her mouth, but she’s said it in interviews that while doing the film, that she kind of OD’d on [true crime]. She doesn’t seek that content anymore, she doesn’t get a kick out of it. She’s now very critical.

Also, all true crimes are not created equal. Some of them are very well-made and interesting, but some of them are very cheap and exploitative. They forget all about the victims, completely mythify the killer and it normalizes everything.

While doing my research, I kind of fell prey to that rabbit hole myself. I had that excuse of, “Oh, I have to watch Don’t Fuck with Cats,” or this or that. But man, I always felt drained afterwards. It’s not nourishing entertainment. You spend so much time with it and then you feel like you’ve been had. You’re a bit complicit in something that you don’t necessarily endorse.

Filmmaker: As a woman, I can tell you that I was obsessed with the macabre, especially in my youth. I had a blog dedicated to gory crime scene photos and snuff images. I think it has something to do with desensitizing yourself to the omnipresent threat of violence that is always on the periphery of your existence. It’s hard to cope otherwise. I do really hate true crime “content,” though. Kelly-Anne felt relatable in the sense that she’s engaging with these images on her own terms as opposed to digesting the case for entertainment value.

Plante: She’s obviously a clever character. She might be very self-aware of her deviancy — maybe she even considers it a deviancy. Like with somebody who has a paraphilia, sometimes you just can’t help it. You can’t control it. At the very least, she understands that she needs to stay very hidden doing this. So in that sense, yes, she’s meant to be a bit relatable, but from afar…

Filmmaker: It’s interesting because so much true crime media, like the Netflix documentaries you’re talking about, specifically target women audiences. Meanwhile, the online sphere that Kellyanne inhabits feels dominated by men. Eventually, her ability to navigate this space helps bring a semblance of justice to other women.

Plante: Yeah, but she also indulges in her fantasies. Of course I’m keeping the riddle alive. I try to keep it complex and haunting in that sense.

To your point, it’s so funny that we have to talk about gender because in the modern day, [you’d think] we would try to think about gender less and less. But then I read this mind-fuck statistic that says of people who have a hybristophilia—who are turned on by those who commit violent crimes—a vast majority of the percentage are women. That boggles my mind. But the film tries to think about the society that potentially creates that, so of course I had to talk about the media and the way the media portrays the killer.

Filmmaker: That is my next question. I’m intrigued by how the film engages with media commentary on real-life tragedies. There’s obviously the late-night talk show that Clementine calls into, but also reporters who swarm the courthouse. They all cast judgment on the women who obsessively attend these trials, but are they not also feeding into that morbid fascination?

Plante: Pretty early on in the process, [I knew that] if we were to make a film about the fans of killers, there would [need to be] screens everywhere. I needed to work on the lore of the film, to try and expand it. There could have been a potential film that is okay with just having the vantage point of Kelly-Anne and Kelly-Anne alone, just following that weird vigilante-ish character. But I was very interested in opening up that scope, so that’s why Clementine exists. That’s why the talk show, the media, has a big presence. Again, going back to my research, it’s not about a killer’s charisma or their physical beauty, it’s really about how the killer is mediatized. Good or bad press, there are fans. So [the media] just needed to be there, to be omnipresent, even. Is the fact that these images and this topic are always being talked about [making us] have to switch off our empathy, if only to cope? Because if I am to switch on my empathy, I cannot even watch the news. If I am to emotionally engage with every story in the news, I would just freaking not be functional at all. There is a bombardment of violent images in our lives. We need to suppress at least some of them in order to just function.

I think that is what makes the film resonate and makes people more able to intellectually engage with it, because we’re not being bombarded with that violent imagery [while watching this film]. We’re able to actually engage our perspective on violence in a way that isn’t actually visibly confronting it, which sets our empathy and perspective askew.

Filmmaker: You keep mentioning your research, and I’m interested in how Red Rooms blends urban legend with the sobering reality of these online spaces. Did you interview certain online individuals? If so, how did you incorporate their viewpoints, or challenge them, in the film?

Plante: Yeah, I didn’t do gonzo, on-terrain research. If I hit a wall with, let’s say a lack of knowledge about certain topics, I would always try and get as many consultants as possible. Then they would go down the rabbit hole even more than me. For instance, I had a tech consultant who is even more of a geek than me. Whenever I had very specific, intense questions, he had a whole network of people who he could pull from and ask. But we are bending the truth and taking some liberties, if only for brevity’s sake. Sometimes you just need to be efficient with what you’re getting at. But as a whole, I wanted the people who are knowledgeable about these things to endorse it and say, “Okay, the filmmaker did his homework.” They might even feel more validated when they find the parts where I’ve bent the truth, and that’s also fun to engage with.

But yeah, I had consultants in cyber crime, people who actually did watch many people dying [in videos].  I’ve never watched a real human being die on screen, which is true and not true, because we’ve all seen the picture of the migrant child on the beach, for instance. We’ve all seen snuff images, maybe not live videos, but that’s still shocking. I try to stay as healthy as possible, so I had consultants that would be the ones going a bit deeper and darker.

Filmmaker: In terms of online myths and folklore, where did you feel inspired to blur the line between reality and urban legend?

Plante: I got more and more comfortable as I went deeper into pre-production, because one point research stops and imagination takes over. It’s also fun to have a film that is expressionistic, that plays with genre and the codes of what a thriller is, can be or should be. It got way less dark and much more fun as an endeavor. Kelly-Anne started rooted in reality, but then [I decided that] I was gonna just film her like a vampire.

Filmmaker: Yeah, I also want to ask about Kelly-Anne’s modeling occupation. I know Juliette dabbled in the practice before transitioning to acting, but what significance does it hold here? She already possesses a mannequin-like blankness of expression, but the photos from her kink-adjacent shoots actually convey so much raw emotion.

Plante: She’s someone who we can call “terminally online.” Just existing online makes her feel alive, but also in being a model, you don’t really need to brand your true self. As we mentioned, she’s aware of her true self and maybe even her perversions, but she also has power over her image. She’s able to use that to her advantage, but that career is coherent with so many of her fields of interests, like cosplay. Like a mannequin that wears these kinds of clothes and does photoshoots, she’s [playing] make-believe. She’s also existing online as an idealized version of herself. The shell is shaped in the way she wants it to be shaped. I’m not saying that all models are sociopaths, but it just made sense. Modeling and playing squash, for instance, are all things that lined up the more I got thinking about Kelly-Anne and what she could be into.

Filmmaker: Finally, can you share any more details about that period drama you mentioned earlier?

Plante: We’re trying to get it off the ground, which in Canada basically means that we’re gonna apply to the key financial institution this fall. It’s competitive, so you never know, I might be put on the waitlist. Or I might get greenlit sooner rather than later. We are going to find out in the first half of next year. The screenplay is ready-ish. You know, writing is rewriting, but we’re comfortable enough to move ahead with this.

It’s set in the 17th century and mostly takes place on a boat. It’s about a colonial policy that everybody’s aware of in Quebec, where at one point in history they sent young women en masse to literally marry and procreate in New France. In 1660, there were something like 10 men per every woman in Quebec. So it’s about this super weird, sexist colonial policy, but it also ends up being kind of a survival movie on the boat, because the crossing is cursed and people die of scurvy and [the women] get blamed as witches. It dabbles with folk horror—though that might be overselling the genre elements—but it’s definitely very atmospheric, gloomy and brooding, with lots of women existing in it.