Tag Archives: Maxwell McCabe-Lokos

Seeing Red

Red Rooms

by Hope Madden

True crime culture. Serial killer groupies. The Dark Web. Does all of it seem too grim, too of-the-moment, too cliché to make for a deeply affecting thriller these days?

Au contraire, mon frère. Québécois Pascal Plante makes nimble use of these elements to craft a nailbiter of a serial killer thriller with his latest effort, Red Rooms.

What is a Red Room? It’s a dark web chamber where you can watch the kind of thing Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) is accused of doing. You don’t want to see what goes on there (and thankfully Plante does not subject us to it). Instead, we stalk Chevalier’s trial day after day with Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, astonishing).

But what is this model and online poker player doing sleeping in an alley just to get in line early enough to claim one of the few peanut gallery seats available for this, Quebec’s trial of the decade?

The enigma of Kelly-Anne—and Gariépy’s meticulous performance—becomes the gravitational pull in Plante’s riveting thriller. What is she doing and why is she doing it? Is she good or bad? Should we be worried about Clementine (Laurie Babin, a perfect dose of tenderness against Gariépy’s cool delivery), the down-and-out groupie Kelly-Anne takes in?

Plante expertly braids vulnerability and psychopathy, flesh and glass, humanity and the cyber universe for a weirdly compelling peek at how easily one could slide from one world to the other.

His real magic trick—one that remarkably few filmmakers have pulled off—is generating edge-of-your-seat anxiety primarily with keyboard clicks, computer screens and wait times. But the tension Plante builds—thanks to Gariépy’s precise acting—is excruciating.

They keep you disoriented, fascinated, a little repulsed and utterly breathless.

Many filmmakers in the last few years—the number growing with the rise of internet culture and mushrooming since the pandemic—have sought to reflect the dehumanizing effect of isolation. Few have done so with such unerring results as Plante and Gariépy. And they spawned a stellar thriller in the process.

Platinum Status

Stanleyville

by George Wolf

Every once in a while, a film comes along that has no hope of fitting inside those “every once in a while” constraints.

Because if you’re looking to sum up Stanleyville in such generic terms, good luck to you.

It’s a weird movie. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

In his feature debut, director and co-writer Maxwell McCabe-Lokos serves up an offbeat comedy that is equal parts exaggerated and restrained, one that’s anchored by the quiet existential dread of Maria (Susanne Wuest from Goodnight Mommy).

Startled by a hawk flying into her office window – and the lack of a reaction from her co-worker – Maria walks off away from her job, her family and the few material things she’s carrying with her. Slumped and staring blankly ahead from a massage chair at the local mall, Maria’s approached by older gentleman in an ill-fitting suit. Oh, and his name is Homunculus (Julian Richings).

What’s this? Maria’s been chosen from among “hundred of millions of candidates” to compete in a contest. And not just any contest, a “platinum level exclusive contest!”

The prize: a brand new habanero-orange compact SUV.

Maria’s in, and she reports for duty to find four other contestants (with names like Bofill Pancreas and Manny Jumpcannon) ready to battle for that sweet habanero ride. As Homunculus explains the ten rounds of competition (“Uh, there’s only eight up there.”), check that – eight rounds of competition, contrasts are drawn between Maria and her opponents.

She’s up against a hedge fund d-bag, a muscle bound jock, the fame whore and the badass bitch. McCabe-Lokos fits all four into clearly purposeful stereotypes, while Maria is reserved and harder to read.

The eight rounds are bizarre and abstract, with the microcosm of society breaking down along familiar lines as desperation grows to get the grand prize, along with the validation of conquering “the very essence of mind-body articulation.”

The brand of satire is indeed fascinating and ambitious, it’s just never more than dryly clever. Even at barely 90 minutes, a sense of drag seeps into the film, and though McCabe-Lokos shows definite promise for the future, Stanleyville hits the final bell more of a curiosity than a champion.