Explore the Fallout of Mythologizing True Crime With 'Red Rooms'

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Origins of the Idea for Red Rooms

"As you said, since it is multifaceted. There's a few simple things that came first, and eventually it got more and more complex as I went along.

The core of doing the film from a vantage point of somebody who's obsessed with a killer came roughly 10 years ago. I watch lots of movies, so the inspiration always comes from the same place. You see so many cliches, and films that are done and redone in kind of the same way. What's the take that I feel like I'm craving? That I'm missing somehow?

With investigation films, there are plenty about serial killers. You have portraits of the killers. There's been a few of those—the periphery of a killer.

Whenever I was watching a true crime show or whatever, there would always be a couple shots of—mostly women, but women with billboards in the courtroom. I felt like I wanted a film about them. This is really interesting. This is really intriguing. But in order to do it well, I had to do lots of research, because I can't be biased. If I write characters I don't love, at the very least I should try and understand them. If I have prejudices, or if I'm judgmental towards them, it won't work.

I read about it to the point where the phenomenon becomes less about like, "Oh, look at these crazy women." It's more about, "Oh, look at the culture that allows this behavior to exist."

And then why is it that? What are the components?

So one thing led to another, and I wanted to talk about obsession with killers, then I kind of had to talk about the media in a way, because, in a way, they are the ones that create the myth around the killer and the aura around the killers.

In my research I found it's not about the physical beauty of the killers that attracts people. It's really how mythified that person is. [The killer] could be ugly by regular standards of beauty and still attracts tons and tons. Charles Manson had daily wedding proposals at the end of his life, and he had, like, no teeth. But anyway, so point being is that the media [mythologizes], but then also, by watching lots of true crime and thrillers and all of that, I felt like we give killers way too much power.

If we give them a six hour Netflix show, they win, in a way—[they're often] narcissistic monsters. And sometimes you feel a bit like an accomplice almost if you watch so many hours.

And that got me thinking and researching about newer technologies.If I'm a psychopath 2021, what are the tools that I could use? And that led me to the whole dark web rabbit hole that became an epiphany—what if their was an audience for crimes?

It kept building [to Red Rooms]."

Researching for a Realistic Dark Web

"I didn't go method in the research. It's not that I'm scared of the dark network. If anything, I have a very bias, almost positive opinion about it in the sense that the technology in itself is good technology. I think we can all sit down and agree that having a tool that doesn't allow a third party to spy on your every move online is not evil in itself.

It's human nature, man.

It's almost like the Old West when it's lawless, and that's where the darkness of the human soul comes out—that's basically what's to blame here with no Sheriff in town.

It's very easy to go on the dark network. You just go download the thing, and you're pretty much set. But I didn't want to improvise. I did lots of research about it. I didn't feel the need to necessarily engage with it first degree, but I had consultants that understand these tools.

I had people in cyber crime read the screenplay and exchanged with them. I had a guy that understands everything online, and he helped me also with all the hacking stuff. I had legal consultants.

I stayed sane. I stayed safe from it. I can watch very gory fiction films, but if it's fake, it's safe. It can be very brutal. But there's always a sense in something in your brain that tells you, oh, no, this is make believe, this is still safe, even though it might be looking extreme and sound extreme. Whereas if it's real, it can be almost nothing, and it's already too much true, and because it's real and somebody real died.

That's also tied to another thing that I think is not the right word, maybe, but what I'm trying to say about it is I'm trying to gauge where, how is our empathy doing through these tools? And I didn't want to fall prey to what I'm trying to denounce, or at the least comment on by going overboard with my own research.

There's that fine ethical line to walk on doing all this."

The Power of Withholding Violence and Graphic Images 

"There's a kind of dance that I'm trying to have with the audience's brain—their needs and wants. If you're seeking a dark thriller, you might expect to see some of it makes you wonder, what do you even expect from such a thriller? Do you want to see that? If so, what does it say about you?

Because you say, "Oh, I hope I don't see that." And I hear that often and I hear, and so that's good. You win an award for being potentially an empathetic person.

I have people come and talk to me and be like, oh, I wish you'd shown the [Red Room] video". I'm like, okay, well, maybe jokes on you, but it is fine. That's a valid take, potentially. But it's just either you want or you don't want to see it that's on you. But the foreplay about it is interesting. Do I want to see it? Or will it lead there? And if not, how? So you play with just the anticipation and the needs and the wants of the audience for such a film, and that's fun to do. I'm trying to be a better chess player than the audience watching it the first time.

We only do show one brief image of the Red Room, and even that was a debate. But I wanted to see the eyes of the killer.. And even Clementine and the Killer, they have kind similar-ish eyes. So that's even tied to potentially why Clementine connects to the killer in the first place. I have these eyes and he has these eyes, and I would never do that. So he would never do that—that kind of weird logic.

But seeing his eyes felt interesting narratively to have that moment where there's no more contest here, that's him. But even that was debated."

The Unassuming Challenges of Shooting Screens  

"Oh, filming screens. This is hell on Earth.

Because it looks easy everywhere in our lives. Even right now, I'm looking at a screen, I will look at screens every day, but it's very uninteresting. It's a 2D plane. It's hard to have the eye because in 3D, even though a film is 2D at the end of the day, but having 3D, you play with depth of field, you have another dimension to guide the eye, whereas for a screen you don't. Then if you want the audience to look at a precise spot in the screen you can angle the screen and create a fake vector field and you really aim it there. But that can feel very like, "oh, I'm taking your hand and this is very what you should be watching."

And you can't just build interfaces—an interface that has the narrative info super highlighted,—because then it wouldn't be unrealistic. The screen is chaotic. Even now there's so many things on my fucking screen. So it's way harder than it sounds, and there's so many screens [in Red Rooms].

So yeah, it's just like a lot of brainstorm with the DP. It's like, we'll do split diopter, we'll put a glass in front of the screen to have a shot-counter-shot. We had a lot of ideas and everything stuck, everything ended up being in the film. Otherwise it would be just too uninteresting looking.

It was very tedious."

Creating a Believable Dark Web Poker Game 

"We had to pre-program everything in the poker game, this character, this amount, this character folds, etc. It was very complex just to pre-animate something. We take that for granted. It's a game, but then, no, it needs to be on a screen.

There's almost like a screenplay on the side of the real screenplay, which literally says, "okay, that character bids, this character folds." And even, and then on the message bars, I also wanted the misogyny and violence of the dark, deep culture of people online. I wouldn't put that in the main screenplay, but then of course, I had to write all of these [dark web poker characters] as well. So there's now the hidden side screenplay with all of these technicalities, which are super tedious to plan and tedious to film.

I wanted somebody who doesn't know how to play poker to still get enough of a sense of what's at stake and what's going on that they still can be somewhat engaged in it. And that's easier said than done.

And then the talk show scene, that's very hard to do as well. We actually filmed the Fake Talk show, edited it, then we had the actresses on set [responding to it in the separate scene]."

Pascal's Wisdom for Filmmakers 

"What works for me is I don't try to imitate what I like. I try to come up with something that I crave, and I don't see.

It's too easy to be like, "oh, I like this film and I want to make my own little version of this." But then how is that pertinent? How is that relevant? Because the original film still exists.

So for me, what validates the whole artistic process, is, yeah, I've never seen this film. I wish I'd seen this film. I'm humbly going to try my luck at doing the film that I crave and that I miss and that I just don't see. But that's hard because so many people think about what previously worked.

Unless you have a very creative producer, people reading your screenplay want this movie, meets that movie. Something very simple or understandable—a proven recipe. You almost have to fight back against it.

Long answer to say, yeah, I just watch tons of films to try and come up with films that don't look like all of the films that I watch."