Red Rooms

2024 Ranked My butthole was CLENCHED during the bidding—one of the most evil movies without ever showing violence but still having the most terrifying and unsettling scenes of the year. Above all, it’s a perfect exploration of society's deep fascination and desensitization with macabre true crime and violence, where these acts are not only consumed as entertainment but strip all the victims of humanity and turn them into nothing but puppets on the show. Focusing on Kelly Anne might seem odd since she doesn’t have any involvement in the case, but for me, she really managed to explore how people like her can become emotionally detached from victims and from reality, being consumed by their obsession. Everything, for me, was perfect and was clearly done with such attention to detail. The courtroom and the way it was filmed as more of a theater or a show, rather than a place where justice will be served, but uses the suffering of people as mere entertainment—it’s a great “calling y’all out” movie for the obsessed true crime people who tell tragic stories without any heart and defend the murderers and fangirl over them. This movie couldn’t have come at a better time, especially because of the series Dahmer that was already done ridiculously by Murphy, but also people calling the character hot and saying they would want to be the victim—it’s nothing but disgusting. The film's critique is also amplified by the fact that all those invasions of privacy and the victims' lives were done anonymously and digitally. Kelly Anne’s obsession with the dark web, her search for all that forbidden content, is a symbolism for the complete disappearance of ethical boundaries in technology. The film explores how the detachment of all these online interactions encourages people to engage with content they never would in real life and underscores the dehumanizing effects of voyeurism. It shows a collective failure in society's processing of violence and trauma, where instead of feeling sorry, people want more and more. But Kelly Anne isn’t the only one wrong here—so is the news, the people, the TV, the whole system that is rigged to turn everything into a show. Instead of being compassionate to the victims, it forces them to have the trial that decides if their brutalized kids will have justice, turning their tears, their suffering, all into a public spectacle, for people to fall in love with the "evil." It was macabre—no jumpscares, not much blood, just performances, a score, and our reality to wake you up and see what this is doing to people. It really reminded me of Crimes of the Future mixed with Longlegs and Zodiac. Obvious shoutout to Juliette Gariépy—her performance was one of the best of the year, and it makes me so fucking mad how she will not get nominated for an Academy Award or this movie won’t even be in the international feature category, because the Academy fucking sucks and will probably nominate and give the award to, I don’t know, Emilia Pérez. Plante here created such a masterpiece that left me speechless and will probably sit on my mind for months. It won’t answer your questions and makes you work for it. The most important question being, "What is her motive?" But I think the truth is she doesn’t have any other than being curious. She doesn’t care about solving it; she doesn’t care what happened to them. Her dressing as Camille wasn’t to try and see if he would react in a way that people could say “he did it,” but just to triumph, just to see if she could be the only one to get his attention. Her life was summed up by consuming and seeing how much she could consume, how deep she could dive in, and consume more and more, like addiction—which ends in a person with zero emotions when she isn’t consuming tech. So maybe she is as evil as the killer. The director really wanted to show us how the killer isn’t the only evil in here, but everyone who obsesses with this. Kelly Anne lives a life of isolation, her only friend being an AI task manager. Isolation and emotional detachment are crucial elements for all this so-called “pure evil.” Kelly Anne’s constant immersion in virtual worlds and dark content consumed her real-life persona, so all these money, the hustle, the grind, the workout—all of this to try to ignore the fact she doesn’t remember her last interaction with a human. And when she has the opportunity, she doesn’t know how, due to her addiction to this content that is becoming more and more common in today’s society. The ending forces these ideas, giving her no redemption or even a satisfying ending. She finally managed to see the disgusting snuff film, which, I’ll be honest, both scenes of them watching it, they don’t show anything, but still, it was so chilling and terrifying—the lack of even a soul in her eyes. And when she gets a reaction, it’s “amusement.” This triumph is so hollow and reveals just how destructive this obsession was. Both her and the killer are evil—the killer is the creator, and she is the consumer. So which one is really better? If she is consuming this violence, even if it’s supposed to be “art,” but there’s no meaning, is it anything other than dehumanizing? Overall the best, most chilling and disturbing films of the year, never relying on traditional violence but leaving you terrified and unsettled with its brutal critique of society’s obsession with true crime. The movie nails the way we, as a culture, consume suffering and trauma as entertainment, stripping victims of their humanity and turning them into mere pawns in a twisted game. Kelly Anne, despite not being directly involved in the case, becomes the true focal point, showing how obsession with dark content can detach a person from reality and emotion, leaving them hollow and numb. Her emotional detachment and search for forbidden material are symbolic of society’s growing desensitization to violence. The film’s critique is amplified by its portrayal of a justice system that turns tragedy into spectacle, and Kelly Anne’s character represents the deeper, more insidious evil of passive consumption. This movie is a wake-up call, forcing you to reckon with just how much we’ve all become consumers of cruelty.