(Reviews of Red Rooms; Starve Acre; and The Whip)
RED ROOMS.
Following La Génération porn (2014), Fake Tattoos (2017), and Nadia, Butterfly (2020), French-Canadian Pascal Plante's fourth feature, Red Rooms, is a rumination on the current vogue for true-life crimes. Taking its title from those websites purporting to host snuff footage, the story, by all accounts, draws on discoveries the director made while happening upon some of the more sinister corners of the Internet during the Covid pandemic.
Having slept rough to get one of the few seats open to the public in a Montréal courtroom, model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) sits near the bulletproof box to get a good view of Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), as Crown prosecutor Yasmine Chedid (Natalie Tannous) outlines how she will pursue her case. She will call expert witnesses to prove that `Demon of Rosemont' abducted three schoolgirls (aged 16, 14, and 13) and broadcast their mutilation and murder in his garage via an online red room.
While Chedid emphasises the youth and innocence of the victims and the hideous horror she witnessed on the tapes made of two of the killings, defence counsel Richard Fortin (Pierre Chagnon) informs Judge Marcel Godbout (Guy Thauvette) and the jury that much of the prosecution case is circumstantial and can be refuted by experts in computer hacking. He can also assure the court that the blameless Chevalier has not profited from the kind of pay sites that charge sizeable sums. As Fortin closes his remarks, the camera closes in on Kelly-Anne, who is staring intently at the defendant. She expresses her fascination with the case on being asked by a TV crew, but she keeps things low key, unlike Chevalier's fervent supporter, Clémentine (Laurie Babin), who volubly protests his innocence, as Kelly-Anne takes the subway home.
She lives in a chic, but Spartan apartment in a tower block and makes shakes to drink while attending to work messages to the eerie sound of the whistling wind. She leaves after a couple of hours to resume her vigil outside the courthouse. However, she's woken by Clémentine, who tries to befriend her in the queue and over lunch. Both women are singled out for censure by Francine Beaulieu (Elisabeth Locas), the mother of the youngest victim, Camille, who breaks down in front of the waiting press to express her hope that Chevalier isn't able to wriggle free as his sentence is her best hope of getting some sense of closure.
Returning to her computers, Kelly-Anne researches Camille's school website and uses dark web connections to follow up things she spots in a news video of the discovery in Chevalier's garden of the bodies of the three girls. It's intense stuff, as Kelly-Anne delves deeper with a speed that suggests she's no stranger to this part of the Worldwide Web. Not that she has any qualms, as she clicks straight on to an exercise video and starts doing the routine.
She's just as impassive next day at a photo shoot, but takes pity on Clémentine when she bumps into her. Inviting her home for a takeaway, Kelly-Anne introduces her to Guinevère, her voice-recognition software, and explains how it's been customised to screen dodgy material. They have little in common, but are getting along okay until Clémentine insists on live-calling a TV satire show and giving an impassioned defence of Chevalier, despite Kelly-Anne hissing at her to hang up.
Mocked by the host and panellists, Clémentine starts sobbing and Kelly-Anne tries to comfort her. She also tries to teach her to play squash as an outlet for her feelings and lets her tag along to a shoot. Moreover, she explains how she makes money from online poker and enjoys picking on weak players and cleaning them out. Her secret is to rein in her emotions and never trust to luck.
The trial continues and, in the third week, the jury is shown the two existing snuff tapes. Clémentine is frustrated, as the gallery is cleared. But she is astonished to discover that Kelly-Anne has downloads on a memory stick and the younger woman blenches through tears, as Kelly-Anne points out the moments that make it clear that Chevalier is guilty. Feeling crushed, Clémentine decides to go home and is hurt that Kelly-Anne seems so indifferent.
She sleeps rough as usual and attends a session in which an expert on the Tor network explains how it exists to protect the privacy of those seeking restricted information. He also discloses how cryptocurrencies are used for transactions on the dark web and Kelly-Anne tries to gain access to a site with strict verification rules, but decides to hold off.
Following a visit to Chevalier's house, she is informed by her agency that she's been cancelled by a client and she's dropped altogether when she attends court on Chevalier's birthday with blonde hair, a school uniform, and braces on her teeth. He waves to her as she's removed from the courtroom and, with the media in a frenzy, she reapplies for the forbidden site and passes its criteria. Returning home from collecting a phone code from a paybox, Kelly-Anne notices a van outside the apartment block and feels she's being watched as she goes inside.
Playing poker to win a stake to bid for the Camille video, Kelly-Anne struggles to keep a clear head. But she wins both the game and the auction and feels a mix of exhilaration and trepidation. Having calmed herself down, she sits to watch the video with headphones, as her face distorts with the red light emanating from her large PC screen.
After it's over, Kelly-Anne sneaks out of the building through the basement to avoid being seen on the CCTV system. She goes to Chevalier's house and activates the door code. Having taken a couple of selfies sat on a bed, she leaves her memory stick on a dressing table and leaves.
A news reporter outside the court explains how the anonymously provided evidence has bust the case open, as the Camille video clearly shows Chevalier's face. Kelly-Anne has also left evidence of his bitcoin activities and this was enough to make him change his pleas to guilty. The film ends with Clémentine giving an interview in which she apologises for having been a Chevalier groupie and extends her condolences to the families. Pulling away from the screen, the camera leaves us in the darkness with Kelly-Anne.
Deeply unsettling, if a little self-satisfied, this is a thought-provoking treatise on the ongoing media obsession with true-crime stories and the cults of the most heinous serial killers. Yet rather than linger on the gruesome details of the Chevalier crimes, Pascal Plante turns the focus on those who become fixated with depraved killers and the reasons behind their unswerving devotion. He might have revealed more about Clémentine's backstory, as there must be more to her misplaced faith than a compassion prompted by the sadness in the killer's eyes. Similarly, there are references to Kelly-Anne's edgy private life without tangible details being divulged that might explain her decision to show up in court as a schoolgirl and her readiness to risk all in order to secure the missing video and use it to incriminate Chevalier beyond all reasonable doubt.
Is she a spurned groupie, a cyber-vigilante, a traumatised survivor, a penitent client, or merely a high-stakes gambler? Who can tell, as we know next to nothing about her apart from her stress-relieving reliance on squash. Doesn't it also seem a bit odd that she can get into court each day with such ease and without anybody seeming to take an interest in her repeated presence, when she would appear to be a successful model whose face is known?
But we keep watching precisely because Kelly-Anne is so unknowable and because she is played so dispassionately and with such impenetrable intensity by Juliette Gariépy. Something has compelled her to venture on to the dark side and it's only when she sees the impact it has made on the impressionable Laurie Babin that she seems to rethink her conduct. Or does she? Does Clémentine merely convince Kelly-Anne that she has to shock her out of her hero-worship or does she have a grander design to expose a sadistic monster and those who profit from and get their kicks out of his crimes?
With Vincent Biron's camera often fixing on faces in both the pristine white courtroom and the crepuscular gloom of the apartment (designed by Laura Nhem), Plante is able to suggest rather than show when it comes to the more distressing elements of the case. The shift from bluish light to red filters to suggest the bloodiness of the video content, as the two women watch the computer screen, is complemented by the excruciating screams and power tool sounds heard in the mix designed by Olivier Calvert and audio effects editor, Mathieu Beaudin. Starting with a harpsichord and an acoustic guitar, but adding instruments as the action intensifies, Dominque Plante's score is equally effective. For such a meticulous study control and the power it exerts, however, the denouement is frustratingly unsatisfactory.
STARVE ACRE.
Having been nominated for the BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for Apostasy (2017), sophomore Daniel Kokotajlo crosses the Pennines to dabble in a little folk horror in Starve Acre, which he has adapted from an acclaimed 2019 novel by Andrew Michael Hurley.
Two years after Richard (Matt Smith) and Juliette (Morfydd Clark) leave Leeds to return to his rural childhood home of Starve Acre, young son, Owen (Arthur Shaw), starts claiming that the voice of Jack Grey keeps telling him to do naughty things. They become more violent, however, and, when he uses a stick to blind a white pony at the village fair, Owen is taken to a doctor in Wakefield, who conducts tests. But Richard is more convinced that Owen has had his head filled with the kind of superstitious nonsense with which his father, Neil Willoughby, and local farmer, Gordon (Steve Gilder), used to taunt him when he was a boy.
Richard now teaches archaeology and agrees to dig with Owen for the roots of the oak tree that was once central to local affairs, in order to disabuse him of Gordon's notion that it's a portal to the spirit world. However, shortly after a walk to search for fossils in the beck, the asthmatic Owen collapses and dies at the house, while Juliette is alone.
Withdrawing into himself, Richard begins looking through his father's old papers and finds a photo suggesting that he had once been used in an attempted human sacrifice. Juliette takes to her bed and has to rouse herself when they get a visit from her sister, Harrie (Erin Richards). He resents her tidying Owen's room and blames Juliette for not responding quickly enough to her son's attack. She is nettled when he suggests she never really wanted the boy and snaps that he refused to accept he had problems.
While Richard erects a tent in the field and starts digging for the oak roots, Gordon tries to apologise for past misjudgements and swears that he hadn't mentioned Jack Grey to Owen. Traumatised by a nightmare that she had seen Owen's ghost while watching television, Juliette agrees to meditate with Mrs Forde (Melanie Kilburn) from the village. She urges her to let his spirit move on and Juliette jumps when something jumps across her hand and the extinguished candle flickers back to life. But Mrs Forde swears it's all good and will help the dandelion to bloom (as it is now spring).
Harrie is concerned for her sibling and invites Juliette to spend time with her by the sea. But she seems distracted, as does Richard, who has noticed that the lepine skeleton he has unearthed from the field has started to regenerate tissue, fat, and organs in a box in his father's study. One night, it just hops out of the box and twitches its nose across the room. Juliette insists on entering and tells Richard to catch it in a box and release it in the woods. The hesitant creature seems to growl when trapped, but falls silent before disappearing into the trees.
That night, Richard and Juliette make love and he cries because he no longer knows what's happening to him. He goes out digging in the night and has uncovered the roots of the fabled tree by morning. However, Harrie has wandered into his study and found Neil's notebook and shows Juliette the parts about a sacrifice and the need for the dandelion to bloom.
Museum colleague, Steven (Robert Emms), drops round to see Richard, who has been given time off. He finds him by the exposed trunk and is amazed by how well preserved the mummified bark is. As he helps dig, Harrie screams from the house because the hare has come back to attack her lapdog and she's been badly bitten on the arm. When Juliette cuddles the hare and chops it carrots in the kitchen, Harrie drives away thinking they've both gone mad.
Placing the hare in a wicker basket, Juliette is disturbed to see Steven shouting `I am here for him' in the garden - when he's actually still with Richard and they are discussing 17th-century superstitions about hanging trees and gateways to the underworld. Taking a knife, she goes to the pit and stabs Steven, informing Richard that Jack had told her to let Owen die because he was the beloved son needed to be sacrificed in order to facilitate his return to the world.
Passing Harrie in a phone box, Gordon tells her that Neil had not been able to summon Jack because he didn't love his son enough. He insists that Juliette is blessed because Jack has given her a second chance at motherhood. Returning to Starve Acre, Harrie ventures into the house, as Gordon buries Steven and Mrs Forde calls on the spirits to accept the sacrifice. But they need a third victim, so Richard belts Harrie with a convenient hammer and watches her twitch and bleed on the wooden floor, as Juliette unbuttons her blouse and starts breast-feeding the hare.
A fair degree of disbelief has to be extended in order to get through this folkloric chiller. From Francesca Massariol 's production design and Emma Fryer's costumes to Brenna Rangott's measured editing and Adam Scarth's atmospheric photography, the craftsmanship is impeccable in establishing the pall cast over the farmhouse in the middle of the moors. The mizzliness of the views across the verdant bleakness is positively Brontëan, with Matt Smith's mop of hair and brooding intensity giving him an air of Heathcliff.
But his calculated performance contributes to the sense of plodding deliberation that is reinforced by the shrieking and wailing that Matthew Herbert weaves into a folksy score that drowns out the sound of nature that would have made this much more unnerving. As it is, the endless dissonance keeps reminding viewers that they are watching an archly make piece of film rather than allowing them to be cocooned by the sinister aura and drawn into the Willoughbys' plight.
In this regard, the picture has much in common with Mark Jenkin's Enys Men (2022), which similarly tapped into English lore with a heavy hand. Morfydd Clark likewise draws on her work in Rose Glass's Saint Maud (2019), while Steven Gilder and Melanie Kilburn feel like they've walked in from an Amicus movie, when Alan Clarke's Play For Today take on David Rudkin's Penda's Fen (1974) might have been more appropriate. Kokotajlo aspires even more loftily to Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973), but Smith and Clark aren't on a recriminatory or guilt-tripping par with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.
Frittering the fascinating legend at the heart of Andrew Michael Hurley's Gothic text, this still has its moments, with the revitalising cadaver effects recalling the stop-motion genius of Jan Švankmajer in reversing a symbolic shot in Repulsion (1965) - although the later shots of the living hare are less impressive - while the breastfeeding finale recalls another Roman Polanski classic, Rosemary's Baby (1968).
Moreover, Kokotajlo should be commended for the neat inclusion of a scene from the BBC's 1964 production of Hamlet At Elsinore, as not only does it allow Juliette and Harrie to argue over whether Michael Caine is sexier than Gene Hackman, but it also slips in a subliminal Sutherland link to Don't Look Now and echoes Shakespeare's notion that nothing good can come from fathers and sons messing with the supernatural.
THE WHIP.
Few got the chance to see Christopher Presswell's first two features, Forget Paris (2011) and Candlestick (2014). But The Whip has made it on to the release schedule and there's enough on show here to back up his website claim to be a `Jack of All Cinematic Trades'.
Having suffered brain damage during a cardiac arrest in her twenties, Emily Baxter (Meg Fozzard) has limited mobility and is dependent upon her carer sister, Sadie (Shian Denovan). She is appalled by the questions posed by snooty jobsworth, Barbara Wilson (Rachel Dobell), during an evaluation interview for the Personal Independence Payment. As the radio news notes, the government is about to change the system and veteran MP and trade minister Michael Harrington (Tom Knight) thinks it's all bosh and vents hs feelings to aide Nicole (Tamara Ritthaler) after an unsatisfactory constituency briefing.
Unfortunately, she snitches to chief whip Damian Wilson (Ray Bullock, Jnr.), who discovers in his little black book a racist language scandal involving Harrington from 1991. This leads to him being forced to resign before a key vote on the PIP bill. But Sadie hears the story on the news and enlists the help of old activist pal, Abi Munroe (Gala Wesson), to join her in a scheme to bring down the scandal-beset 13 year-old Tory government and stop the ruinous reform from happening.
Harrington proves easy to bring aboard, while Abi bribes nephew Jason (Daniel Davids) into using his computer skills to hack into the CCTV system at the Houses of Parliament, so that they can't be seen when they slip up the stairs to the Chief Whip's office and steal the book from the safe behind his desk. As millionaire husband, Zac (Adam Azarti), is Black, Abi is unhappy at working with Harrington because of the racial slur that he insists was a misunderstanding and which Jason finds mildly amusing because of the backlash.
In fact, Jason and Harrington get on well when they go to the MP's office to discover that hacking the system is a doddle. As is finding the code to Wilson's office door, which enables Harrington to get a photo of the safe and Abi to buy a replica online. She has to fib to Zac that she's started a book club when he walks in on a planning meeting, but things are slowly coming together. Harrington and Jason even have a discussion about politics being like football and how vital it is to use a vote to keep the system strong and accountable.
Hours after hearing that Emily has been passed fit for work, Sadie learns that the Commons vote on Independence Credit will be in two days. A further problem arises when Harrington realises that there will be TV cameras in the Lobby and that they may well spot them going up the stairs, even if the CCTV is overriden. Unable to arrange for a carer to sit with her sister while she's out, Sadie confesses to feeling the strain and needing to take a risk to stop things getting worse and Emily reassures her that she'll be fine alone for a while.
Volunteering to make the snatch to keep Sadie safe to care for Emily, Abi calls a truce with Harrington and breaks into the safe (with a thump on the frame being enough to ping the door). The black book isn't there, however, as Wilson has it in his pocket. Keeping tabs on him in the Strangers' Bar, Sadie spots the book and is able to pick his pocket as he lies on the ground after Harrington rushes in to punch him. Posting the book from the parliamentary mailbox, Sadie, Abi, and Jason walk away unsuspected, while Wilson has a meltdown.
Ah, if only it was that simple to bring down a government - when we all know its takes something more complicated, like a far-sighted prime minister panicking and calling a snap general election that all but wipes out his party. But this well-meaning, if mischievously specious dig at this country's heartless benefits system is almost as much fun. There's something Ealingesque about Christopher Presswell and Forgács W. András's screenplay, as the underdog has their day at the expense of the fat cats.
The Cummings-like allusions are far from subtle, but amusing all the same, as are the references to `the nasty party'. It's not stated directly that the Conservatives are in power, but the fact that Wilson's office code is the date Margaret Thatcher first came to power is a big enough hint. Ray Bullock, Jnr. is suitably hissable as the sadistic whip, while Tom Knight makes a genial parliamentarian who retains his faith in democracy, if not his party mechanism. His Chelsea vs the Red Devils chat with Daniel Davids is as blatant as the confrontation between the Baxter sisters and the callous assessor. But the scenes make their points well enough, although Emily is reduced to the status of human McGuffin, as her condition and quality of life are merely the pretext for the caper.
Gala Wesson raises smiles as the student rebel who settled for domestic bliss on marrying hunky millionaire, while Shian Denovan brings an Aisling Bea-style energy to the devoted sister at the end of her tether. This is reinforced by the sprightly chamber score composed by Jonathan Armandary and by Presswell's direction, which is brisk enough to keep viewers from examining the plot's plausibility in any detail. He might lay off the aerial shots after the first couple. But, otherwise, this is low-budget social cinema with a conscience and without any of that tiresome Laverty-Loach browbeating.
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