Interview: Pascal Plante on Subverting True Crime Tropes with ‘Red Rooms’

A courtroom setting in cinema often suggests a story moving toward a binary outcome: innocent or guilty. But in his classification-defying thriller Red Rooms, writer-director Pascal Plante finds that the real drama lies in the ambiguities of his protagonist. Beneath the sharp exterior edges of Juliette Gariépy’s Kelly-Anne are the blurred distinctions of her moral compass, though she does let the latter show more in her activities on the dark web.

Kelly-Anne isn’t the person on trial in Red Rooms. The defendant, Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), stands accused of slaughtering three teen girls and broadcasting their deaths online. Yet it’s the mild-mannered murder groupie who attracts the attention of the cameras—both those of the courtroom reporters seen in the film and that of cinematographer Vincent Biron—as she descends into obsession. As the digitally savvy Kelly-Anne gets increasingly involved in the case’s intricate details and befriends a fellow eager observer, Clementine (Laurie Babin), she proves the ideal vessel for Plante to critique a booming true crime genre whose restless urge for certainty has inspired online voyeurism and offline vigilantism.

I spoke with Plante shortly after Red Rooms became a breakout arthouse hit in the early fall and ahead of its VOD release. Our conversation covered how his relationship with on-screen violence shifted since making the film, why he’s still intricately involved in the sound design of his films, and whether online culture encourages people to hide themselves in society.

Intensive research is the genesis of your projects, so did that yield anything when making Red Rooms that might have changed your understanding of true crime?

I came full circle with the true crime stuff. The research was to dig deeper and watch so many trial docs and serial killer stuff. I’m a big film lover, but a horizontal film lover in the sense that I’m not just craving horror-ish, thriller-ish, true crime-ish content. I love Tarkovsky and so many other filmmakers, but it felt like during the pandemic there was something in the air. The freaking pandemic started with Tiger King and never let go, and then it evolved into a Ted Bundy thing. It’s something that I’ve always been extraordinarily critical of, and yet, it’s actually entertaining. And that’s actually what’s what makes you wonder: Why is it that you can’t look away while watching a four-hour doc about a narcissistic asshole?

I’m not judging by saying this. I’m just wondering. What is it about it that’s so morbidly fascinating and entertaining? It’s a type of entertainment that makes you feel depleted after. It’s not like after you watch a good film and you’re energized. After a true crime drama, you feel like [razzes tongue]. Because I wasn’t a big fan in the first place, I had to become knowledgeable about it while doing it. And now, it’s been two years since we shot the film, and the last thing I want to watch is Don’t Fuck with Cats, for instance. I’d rather die than re-watch that shit!

Even the actresses’ take on true crime evolved. Juliette Gariépy, who plays Kelly-Anne, was into a lot of true crime podcasts, and she keeps saying in interviews, “No, I don’t [listen] anymore.” I don’t think the film is preachy, but the whole process of making the film and discussing these topics made her evolve her view on it. She realized that it was very unhealthy. The enjoyment she got didn’t counterbalance the psychological impact. It creeps up on you.

Did that process of immersion inform your choice not to show a lot of graphic imagery or sensationalist violence?

Yeah, 100%. In my research, I avoided graphic images, but I read a lot about them. I also discovered some YouTube podcasts, the whole subculture of the creepypastas of people telling you horror stories. And those are efficient if the YouTuber is a good storyteller! It got me in such a weird mood, and I would listen to that in the dark and be like, “Oh my god, that actually goes back to the century-old tradition of campfire stories that you don’t want to go to bed after.”

Modern horror films don’t do that to me anymore. We’re very literate about the genre, and genre functions for its audience like a double-edged sword. [Genre] gives the audience what they want, but sometimes what the audience wants is something a bit comforting. We as an audience know the code, and so the filmmakers give it to us. But if we know where the film is going to lead, it’s not terrifying anymore. I tried to go back to understand why creepypastas freaked me out and most horror films don’t, and it went back to under stimulating some senses to overstimulate others—most notably the imagination. I think if you conjure up gruesome images in your mind, it’s much harder for you to do away with them. It’s almost part of you, because your psyche made them appear in your mind’s eye. And that’s a fucked up, powerful tool.

But then, it doesn’t mean that the film goes easier on you by not showing [graphic images]. If I watch a gory film, sometimes I can push its violent images away. I keep saying that we’re very literate with this kind of content, so I can see the tricks. I can see the prosthetics and the fake blood. So I try to create a logic where you wouldn’t be taken aback and necessarily see the tricks. Your imagination will lead you to someplace even darker than the film actually takes you to.

Is that something you were exploring with the character Kelly-Anne? Since she’s consuming so much visual information all the time, she becomes a stand-in for the audience, forgetting that these pixels are people.

Completely, even the news has become entertainment. But if you were to take every single news story and switch on your humanity, I would be bawling my eyes out every day. These defense mechanisms come literally from over stimulation, I think. But Kelly-Anne is major league! If we see her as this addict to that kind of content, the first hit is always the strongest. You’re always craving to go back to that level of intensity. The extremity of the content [is what] she needs in order to feel alive. She needs to be the one person to see the death of a 13-year-old that’s been mystified in order to feel that rush of adrenaline again. If you’re not mindful, overstimulation can numb you down. I’m using an extreme character to showcase something that happens at lower doses for most people. Even doing the research and watching true crime or horror films, I became less and less affected by them the more I binged them. It’s fucked up, but it’s normal.

I think what makes us so interested in true crime is that it reflects a society’s belief in justice. Do we believe that law enforcement and society is capable of catching a criminal? Or if the crime goes unsolved, does that mean society has to take the lead in capturing these people because we can’t trust these institutions to protect us anymore? Were you thinking about the film in these terms?

Maybe not as directly, but it’s definitely there. What’s fascinating to me is the idea of having an intense community online. There was the plane that crashed in the middle [of the ocean], and then there was a group of people online being very intense about it. They were zooming in on the oceans meter by meter, and you wouldn’t pay officers to do that kind of work. It had to be overly dedicated people in basements. Does vigilantism emerge from the fact that we think that regular institutions are just not going to do anything? I don’t know, but even watching Don’t Fuck with Cats documentary, it all started with people online that informed law enforcement. That’s not an isolated incident, it’s pretty much the norm nowadays. But is it me blatantly critiquing and criticizing? I think not necessarily, but I’m stating the fact that both coexist.

More so than even true crime, Red Rooms is operating more in the vein of courtroom drama. I love watching courtroom dramas from other countries because even just the architecture of the courtrooms says such interesting things about how a society sees the concepts of law and justice, and I’m curious especially because you recreated the courts…

The courtroom, yes, but not the courthouse. Sometimes you had shots at the security or in front of the building, and those are all the real building, which in itself is a production. It’s hard to get all the access, but we managed. But the courtroom, we decided to build. It was still heavy-ish Covid when we shot, and there was plexiglass everywhere. That would have been a nightmare to shoot around all the reflections. But by it being a set, you could sometimes remove walls in order to create other kinds of shots. There’s a shot in slow motion from a profile at one point in the film. We’re far from the actual wall of the room in order to create that shot. The beginning of the film has a sequence on the technocrane, and we couldn’t put that in a real courtroom.

It’s true, it’s very visually different [from other countries]. There’s been a lot in France: Saint Omer, Anatomy of a Fall, also The Goldman Case. They’re all different. It’s fun and geeky to notice the differences in the justice system. In our case, the building is this brutalist, overly lit cubic building. We even went beyond that. The white cube we built was even more sterile and less busy. It’s not what we’re used to when we think of courtroom dramas. We’re used to high ceilings, lots of people in the audience, hand-carved wooden [tables], very rich looking. In Montreal, that’s not the case, and we even made it less of the case. This, in itself, sets the tone.

Did misdirecting the audience with the courtroom drama framing in the opening scene appeal to you? We think we’re going to go back and forth about Chevalier, but really it’s applying the genre framework to someone merely spectating.

Exactly. I could just flush out all of the exposition [in the scene]. If we as the audience are doing this, we have to do the synthesis. You have the prosecutor doing her thesis, but then you have the antithesis of the defense lawyer. So it’s like a big parenthesis in the narrative, but then we slowly zoom in on Kelly-Anne at the end of that shot. From this point on, we never let go of her. The film is her gaze and interpretation. She’s going to be the key player in this story. Many things [were] at play, but [I was] just slapping as much exposition so after I could be very enigmatic and oblique about the way I approached the story.

But also, [it was] to start stimulating the imagination because that’s something that is going to come back all the time in the film as an esthetic device. Right away, we’re already in that horror campfire story mindset where we hear and don’t see. In these kinds of films, the imagination goes wild. We want to create our narrative. Is he the one doing this? Is she the accomplice? What’s fun is after the film, people exchange with each other all these theories and diverging theories. If you allow the slow burn to be actually slow at times, you feel that blank[ness]. And it’s entertaining still because you’re shaping up wild theories and stories in your mind. It’s fun for me to play with time, even having drawn-out, prolonged scenes that make you wonder.

The sound design is so distinct in the film, both the baroque-inspired score and the layers of the mix where even coughs in the courtroom are audible. How were you approaching these invisible elements?

When I was a film student and even in the years after, I did the sound design of my own films and shorts. It’s only been only two projects, really, that I haven’t done the sound design myself. The sound designers are like, “You’re pretty much the only director who’s there the whole time.” And it’s not to give myself flowers, but it’s just a dimension that I love. It’s funny, the sound because you can be extraordinarily literal and yet very subconscious.

For instance, I wanted the opening sequence to be cold, and we merged buzzes of the [lights] in the courtroom with cold wind. It’s very faint and subtle, yet it’s there. It plays with your subconscious. You feel this coldness. This is fun because people won’t necessarily notice the magic tricks you’re pulling. And that’s the difference between the finished cut and the finished film. Everything is way more potent in the finished film, and sometimes it’s just the tiny layers you add with the sound. Even the ambiance, because it aims to be atmospheric, some of them were written about in the screenplay. For instance, I always wanted to hear the wind from inside Kelly-Anne’s condo. She’s kind of a ghost floating around this whole story.

Then, in the music, we messed with the baroque and medieval, which is dissonant with the preconceived idea we might have about cyberthrillers. But it’s very particular to this film. We’re in the head of that character. Those harpsichords would feel tacky or out of place elsewhere. I think, on the one hand, it’s out of place, and yet it fits perfectly because it only makes sense in this film with this context. You watch a film called Red Rooms that starts with a blue image with a harpsichord, and you might not expect that. But it’s fun to already set the tone that the film will not take you where you expect it to go every time. That’s what makes it a bit scarier.

When dealing with a character as inscrutable as Kelly-Anne, did you and Juliette Gariépy have conversations about her motivations? Did you create a backstory?

No, I think it’s boring to talk about backstory! I think she might have asked me one time. I didn’t really answer, and she didn’t dare ask again. Of course I’ve written the thing, but then the actors have to play it, so I have the tendency to let them do their homework. If you have questions, obviously, I’m available. If you don’t understand something, I’ll give you clues. But when I cast actors, I cast actors for their intelligence, sensitivity, and emotional intelligence. What I talked about with Juliette was even more oblique and weird. We talked about hacking as modern witchcraft, but we most definitely didn’t talk about potential traumas. Juliette’s work wasn’t to dwell on what separates her from Kelly-Anne, but to try and bridge herself closer to her. It got her thinking a lot about her addictions, cravings, and fantasies she wouldn’t necessarily admit herself. That’s the kind of work she was doing, but I don’t want them to play for me.

It might sound weird, but I don’t want them to play the variation that I wrote alone in my room. I want us to feel that it makes sense. Even before I direct the actors, to be honest, I leave them the first take. They propose based on what I’ve written, and then we move from there. That’s also a way for even me to be surprised by some of the scenes. Juliette or Laurie played it better than what I’d envisioned, so I would have been stupid to lead them where I’d envisioned without knowing where they could take it. I gave them films to watch and stuff to read. She learned to play squash, and that also helped her physicality. She had to understand how she walks and how to really use stillness to her advantage in this film. I knew the character would be so enigmatic that we would read a lot into tiny details, so she had to be extremely in control of her body language. In real life, she’s more expansive, and that’s real work. Stillness is hard to pull off.

Was that a challenge doing the more technical aspects with her and the screen? People staring into computers or phones is often done with just the most dreary, unimaginative framing, and the approach here is interesting.

It has to be tied to what’s at stake. Sometimes it’s boring because it’s just there to move the character from point A to point B. She’s always seeking something through technology. I can tell you that it was the biggest challenge in this film: how to film screens and make them visually interesting or intelligible. The climax scene is a poker game on one screen, then an auction on the second screen, and I wanted people who don’t play poker to understand what’s at stake. That’s very hard to do, and that gave us a headache. With the DoP, we’re like, “We’re going to use all the tricks in our toolbox to make it visually interesting.” The film has stages of aesthetics. It starts very ghostlike but very controlled, then a bit more realistic when Clementine is at play, then a bit more paranoid when Clementine leaves and she’s being watched.

We also wanted the content of the screens to make sense within where we were aesthetically in the film in order for it to never be visually boring. But again, so much brainstorming went into this, so I’m glad you were mentioning it. That’s way harder than the technocrane shot at the beginning. It attracts a bit of attention to itself, so maybe people think that’s the biggest challenge. I keep saying, “No, no, [it’s] this.” We planned for it. We did it. It went well. It was tedious, it was long, it was hard. We kept hitting our heads against the wall.

The film raises the prospect of a split between an online and an offline persona for everyone engaging with the trial. How did the process of making Red Rooms make you think about the idea of a true self in the digital era?

I think we can all agree that we’re also the sum of the images we consume, the websites we go to, or the online community we adhere to. All of that is just like the extension of our gaze and personality. I think the film is terrifying because of that. In society, we act a certain way to not attract attention to ourselves. And then once we’re in this hidden world, if this is our true self, human nature is super dark. Spending time on 4chan, we’re in this post-trolling culture where everything’s ironic and detached. [There were] so many Pepe the Frogs, and they’re blasé about murder. It’s not even that hidden—just go on message boards on Facebook. If any article uses the term “woke,” you will have an army take over the message boards. You ask me a question, and I answer with a question: Are we hiding our true selves in society and having this outlet online to reveal it? What comes first, I really have no clue, but that’s part of what is terrifying.

Kelly-Anne is a bit invisible, but online, as “The Lady of Shallot,” maybe she showcases her real interests that she can only share with people [on there]. That makes for a character that feels extremely detached from reality. It makes her very cold and enigmatic. The film only works if you want to play the Kelly-Anne riddle. She has to be enigmatic for the film to function. That’s all at play, even the dissonance between her online and offline persona.