‘Red Rooms’ Recap and Ending Explained: Why the Film Refuses to Give Kelly-Anne a Clean Motive

‘Red Rooms’ has spent nearly three years turning casual viewers into amateur detectives, and its slow migration from festival curiosity to streaming staple keeps pulling in new audiences who finish the film and immediately start searching for answers. Directed by Pascal Plante, the Canadian psychological thriller centers on a young woman whose fixation on a murder trial becomes increasingly difficult to explain, and that ambiguity is precisely what keeps people talking about it long after the credits roll.

The film’s premise is simple enough to describe, yet the way it unfolds resists any tidy summary. Pascal Plante’s ‘Red Rooms’ has become one of the most talked about psychological thrillers to emerge from Canada in years, and its unsettling final act is still sending viewers straight to online forums for answers. What follows is a full plot recap and a breakdown of what actually happens by the time the story reaches its unsettling conclusion.

‘Red Rooms’ Plot Recap Before the Trial Begins

The film opens in the still of the night, with Kelly-Anne waking up in a back alley. After a walk through the streets of Montreal, she ends up at the courthouse, awaiting a murder trial to begin. That trial belongs to Ludovic Chevalier, who is convicted of three counts of homicide after Maitre Chedid explains that he brutally killed three young girls named Kim Leblanc, Justine Roy, and Camille Beaulieu.

Chevalier is accused of killing the three women through the urban legend of the Red Room and broadcasting the same publicly, and he pleads not guilty to the crime in court. The official synopsis describes Kelly-Anne as a young woman who wakes up every morning to wait outside the courtroom to secure a seat at the high-profile trial, with the gruesome videos of two of the victims already recovered by investigators.

Kelly-Anne is presented as a model on the side, addicted to exercise and self-discipline to the nth degree, though her full-time preoccupation is internet poker and a parasocial attachment to Chevalier, who sits encased in a glass box while the alleged victims’ mothers are forced to watch the recovered videos in a packed courtroom. Each day she sleeps on top of a dumpster outside the courthouse just to secure the best seat in the room.

Throughout the film, Kelly-Anne uses her technical skill to scan the internet and dark web in search of the third and final tape, the one containing what was inflicted on the third victim, Camille. Two other tapes have already been retrieved, and one of them led directly to Chevalier’s arrest, but Kelly-Anne already has access to the first two and has watched them, seemingly without visible emotion for the girls being harmed on screen.

Kelly-Anne’s Obsession and Her Bond With Clementine

She does feel sympathy for the families of the three girls, yet she is convinced that Chevalier is not responsible for what happened to them, a contradiction that runs through the entire film. As the story continues to surprise its audience, an unlikely friendship develops between Kelly-Anne and Clementine, culminating in the two women bonding over Chevalier and sharing pizza inside Kelly-Anne’s apartment.

Kelly-Anne’s fixation deepens as she begins dressing and styling herself to resemble the murdered Camille, and Chevalier appears to notice and acknowledge her during the trial when she wears clothing similar to what Camille wore. That moment becomes one of the film’s most talked about beats, since it forces the courtroom, and the audience, to confront how far Kelly-Anne’s identification with the victim has gone.

To Kelly-Anne, Camille represents someone who fought for justice even after death, and winning the bid for the video clip becomes tied to that idea of honoring her memory. One review describes her as a part time model, dark web hacker, and online poker player who sleeps outside courtrooms while harboring an uncanny fascination with the case, a description that captures just how many contradictions the character holds at once.

What Happens at the Trial’s Climax

In the film’s climax, Kelly-Anne uses Bitcoin to bid on the third and final tape in a disturbing online auction, and it becomes difficult not to question what her real motives were all along. Faced with the undeniable evidence contained in that footage, Chevalier ultimately pleads guilty to the charges against him, bringing a tumultuous end to the trial and aligning with the horror already felt by the victims’ families.

Critics and audiences have mostly given the film positive reviews, with many appreciating an ending in which the main character’s dissociation and obsession become the very reason the accused killer is ultimately declared guilty. That reversal, in which Kelly-Anne’s most disturbing behavior produces the outcome everyone in the courtroom wanted, is a large part of why the ending has generated so much discussion.

The trial itself unfolds over roughly two months and ends with Ludovic pleading guilty, while Clementine is left regretful of the belief she once held in his innocence. Ultimately, Kelly-Anne leaves a flash drive containing that final tape for Camille’s mother, suggesting that beneath her disturbing obsession there was some attempt at delivering closure to a grieving parent.

‘Red Rooms’ Ending Explained and What Happens to Kelly-Anne

Even so, the film never fully explains why Kelly-Anne went to such extreme lengths in the first place, and that unresolved question is exactly what has kept fans debating online. What exactly happens to Kelly-Anne afterward is difficult to pin down, since in a sense she seems to transcend into a different state now that her self-appointed task is complete, having perhaps ghosted herself entirely or gone to be with Clementine.

In the final scenes, her relentless pursuit of answers leads her to a disturbing revelation that forces her to confront her own complicity as a voyeur, and the ending leaves her isolated, haunted by both the knowledge she has gained and the lengths she went to obtain it. The film closes on an ambiguous note, suggesting her obsession has irrevocably altered how she sees herself and the world around her, trapping her in the psychological red rooms of her own making.

Pascal Plante’s film is punctuated throughout by Juliette Gariepy’s portrayal of Kelly-Anne, a performance that has drawn comparisons to Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander, Sharon Stone’s Catherine Tramell, and Rosamund Pike’s Amy Dunne. Plante masterfully keeps Kelly-Anne’s connection to both the victims and the accused shrouded in ambiguity, and while she presents herself as a fervent advocate for the bereaved families, her true motives remain elusive, casting her as a morally ambiguous figure to the very end.

Cast, Release History, and Critical Reception

The film stars Juliette Gariépy, Laurie Babin, Elisabeth Locas, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Natalie Tannous, Pierre Chagnon, and Guy Thauvette, with cinematography by Vincent Biron, editing by Jonah Malak, and a score by Dominique Plante. It premiered on July 4, 2023 at Karlovy Vary before opening in Canada on August 11, 2023, with a running time of 118 minutes.

The film screened at Fantasia International, BFI London Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival, and Overlook Film Festival, collecting several awards along the way including a sweep at Fantasia International. That festival run at Fantasia earned four prizes, including Outstanding Performance for Gariépy, Best Screenplay for Plante, Best Score for Dominique Plante, and Best Film.

Despite that acclaim, ‘Red Rooms’ did not have a scheduled American theatrical release as 2024 began, and it did not receive a wide streaming release either, leading many to wonder if it would ever reach United States audiences at all. The film eventually earned a United States release in September 2024, presented in French with English subtitles, and it is now streaming on Shudder.

‘Red Rooms’ has received considerable praise for its exploration of self-destructive obsession, credited largely to the performances of its leading cast alongside the technical finesse of its creative team. Whether Kelly-Anne is understood as a grieving surrogate, a voyeur, or something the film deliberately refuses to name, that unresolved core is exactly what has made ‘Red Rooms’ linger with viewers, and it’s worth hearing where you landed on Kelly-Anne’s true motive in the comments below.