There are no real red rooms in Canadian director Pascal Plante’s unnerving thriller Red Rooms. Mostly a lot of white, gray, blank ones — from the bare and futuristically antiseptic courtroom where a grisly trial is taking place, to the minimalist high-rise Montreal apartment where the film’s protagonist lives, to the squash courts where she takes out her anger. The title refers to the horrific, blood-soaked dungeons where, it is alleged, the serial killer on trial — Ludovic Chevalier, also known as “the Demon of Rosemont” and played wordlessly by Maxwell McCabe-Lokos with saucer-eyed, predatory calm — mutilated his teenage victims while livestreaming the slaughter for money. We do witness distant flashes of such a room at one point, but the idea mostly looms over the film like an unseen dimension, a psychotic alternate reality beneath and beyond the eerie, empty drabness of modern life.

Plante’s interest lies not so much in the criminal or his victims but on the people obsessed with him. The film (which is now available on demand and playing in select theaters) follows Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), a statuesque and mostly expressionless professional model who gets in line early every night to get into the small courtroom in the morning. Deep into the world of the dark web, Kelly-Anne spends much of her time playing online poker with Bitcoin and hacking into other people’s private lives — even accessing the email accounts and security codes for the grieving parents of the Demon’s victims. Kelly-Anne doesn’t show much emotion, but Plante often accompanies her scenes with wailing, operatic music that is as expressive as she is not. She also meets another serial killer groupie who could be her polar opposite in personality, Clémentine (Laurie Babin), a manic chatterbox who genuinely believes Chevalier must be innocent because his big eyes are too kind. (His eyes, by the way, are not kind — and Plante makes fine use of them in one of the film’s more striking scenes.)

There is no real bloodshed in Red Rooms, but there is a kind of spiritual savagery. Plante achieves this partly through subtraction: Confronted with a verbal accounting of the Demon’s unspeakable crimes, Kelly-Anne’s poker-faced fascination with the trial is increasingly hard to read. Is she drawn to Chevalier and his alleged acts, or repulsed by them? This is among the many questions that hang in the air for most of Red Rooms’ running time, and the unnerving mystery of Kelly-Anne’s psyche, combined with the ease with which she moves through the shady corners of the internet, present a portrait of a very modern soul — unreadable, unstable, and unsettling.

At the same time, the initially controlled direction of the film — with its long, deliberate tracking shots, and orderly spaces — suggests a character who is herself fully in control of herself and her surroundings. Kelly-Anne might be unwell, but she’s also quite cool. This contrasts sharply with the messy behavior of Clémentine, who during one of the movie’s more bravura sequences calls into a late-night talk show to try and defend Chevalier, only to reveal how unhinged she really sounds. But as Red Rooms proceeds, Kelly-Anne’s reality also begins to slip, and the film’s style becomes looser, more frantic and fragmented. So much so that we might even start to question the veracity of what we’re seeing.

Despite the (thankful) lack of gore and violence, Red Rooms feels curiously giallo-adjacent at times. The bursts of formalism, the melodramatic score, the ways in which the model-protagonist’s own profession becomes a stylistic barometer for her mental state — these are all evocative of that classic, colorful subgenre of horror. What’s missing is the tongue-in-cheek exploitative quality of giallo. Or is it? By denying us cheap thrills, and by pointedly going in the other direction, Red Rooms highlights their absence. This picture about people obsessed with criminals and their grisly crimes confronts us with the mystery of who the obsessives truly are; the questions we ask of Kelly-Anne could also be asked of all us genre fiends. The expressionless, fascinated gaze at the heart of this film is ultimately not the protagonist’s, but our own.

The literary world missed the memo: I’m supposed to be famous by now. 

But aren’t we all? 

The first ingredient for seeking fame while pursuing a fine art is a healthy ego. It is only after an artist becomes famous and successful that they can fake humility. Until then, we’re all scratching and clawing at the walls, trying to be noticed.

And stupendous talent isn’t always a prerequisite for success in the arts. Sure, there needs to be a basic awareness of craft, as well as some innate ability, but the most talented artists aren’t always the most successful or famous. 

I’m not talking about myself, of course. 

With age comes the recognition of our limitations, and there is a reason that I’m hacking out columns while drinking a beer in my basement and not working on my next novel while sipping a fine chardonnay in my chalet.

Instead, I’m talking about the musician Ike Reilly, who fronts a band called The Ike Reilly Assassination. 

In August, directors Michael O’Brien and Mike Schmeideler released a documentary film on Reilly titled “Don’t Turn Your Back on Friday Night.” The film is a refreshing reminder that not all prodigiously talented artists attain worldwide fame. 

I was first introduced to Ike Reilly in Steve Almond’s 2010 book “Rock and Roll Will Save Life.” As a fan of Reilly’s music, I had arrived late to the game. By 2010, Reilly had already released more than a half dozen albums, all except one record released on an independent label called Rock Ridge Music. 

A former gravedigger and hotel doorman, Reilly has lived his entire life in the same town north of Chicago named Libertyville, Ill.—which also happens to be Marlon Brando’s hometown. The documentary captures a lot of Reilly’s backstory, from marrying his high school sweetheart and raising a family, to his decision to give the rock n’ roll life a twirl in his 30s.

Reilly’s first album “Salesman and Racists” was supposed to set the music industry ablaze in 2001, and Universal Records offered Riley a large advance. The album was critically-acclaimed, and to this day, “Salesman and Racists” remains one of those rare albums where I won’t skip a track.

But for some reason—there is a lot of conjecture in the film, including the inability to neatly package Reilly’s music for a specific demographic—it never happened.

The documentary, however, is about far more than a promising rock star who never lived up to the hype and expectations set by the music industry. It’s about how Reilly refused to sell out and continues to create great music on his own terms, in spite of everything. It’s about how Reilly reconciled with his own demons and double-downed on his family. 

Aside from being a compelling story, “Don’t Turn Your Back on Saturday Night” also contains some dynamite tunes. If you’re not familiar with Ike Reilly’s work, this is a good place to start. Many of his relative hits (or my favorite songs)are featured in the film, including the title song, “Commie Drives a Nova,” “I Will Let You Down,” “Garbage Day” and “Born on Fire.”

Steve Almond poignantly describes Reilly’s music in his book: “[Ike Reilly] sounded like Dylan, if Dylan had been Irish instead of Jewish and never left the Midwest and had grown up listening to the Clash rather than Woody Guthrie.”  

Most of all, Ike Reilly is a storyteller and a poet, and any time you find a storyteller and a poet who also makes beautiful music, it is a gift indeed. 

So who cares if they never get really famous? To use a platitude, it is all about the art. 

In “Sugar Daddy,” comedian Sam Morrison sets out to convert tragedy into stand-up comedy. A form of self-therapy, the show (at the Wallis through Oct. 13) recounts the story of how he met the “daddy” of his dreams, only to lose him a few years later to COVID.

Morrison wasn’t necessarily looking for long-term romance when he traveled to the gay mecca of Provincetown for the Spooky Bear festival. He was certainly eager to meet men, preferably older, with large bellies and generous dispositions. But young, handsome and on vacation, he was raring to sample the menu.

“I’m a diabetic,” he explains at the top of the show. “My type is Type 1 but my type is Type 2.” He doesn’t mind if you label him a “chubby chaser,” but he’ll call you a “golden retriever” for being turned on by bones.

The production, directed by Stephen Brackett, who was nominated for a Tony for his staging of “A Strange Loop,” features an egg-like object on Arnulfo Maldonado’s set. This odd-shaped sculpture transforms through Alex Basco Koch’s video design into a massive hairy belly that Morrison rubs affectionately. He likes what he likes, and if you think his taste is weird, he finds conventional heterosexuality to be even weirder.

His meet-cute with Jonathan is assisted by a Category 3 hurricane. Morrison was staying in a hammock on a campground that was good for an orgy but not ideal for a natural disaster. He needed shelter, which meant that he needed to find a hook-up before the bars closed.

Surely there must be a lonely bear willing to rescue a 20-something fetishist in distress. But before Morrison knew it, the clubs had closed and he was stranded under a metal awning at a pizzeria in a state of growing panic. “I’m an anxious, asthmatic, ADHD, gay, diabetic Jew,” he shrieks, repeating the list so that the audience can register the gravity of the situation.

Salvation comes when a man slams into him. Morrison was about to scream but changes his mind when he saw how good-looking the guy was. “You’re the hottest daddy in Ptown,” he said with a drunken effusiveness that earned him an invitation to a tiny Airbnb.

Nora Ephron probably wouldn’t haven’t been tempted to turn this story into a rom-com. The transactional nature of the affair isn’t especially heartwarming. The words “old” and “fat,” while spoken lustfully by Morrison in his setup, reflect a pattern of mind that reduces gay people to physical and sexual stereotypes. Morrison, who punctuates lines with the exclamation “slay!,” sounds at times like Grindr sprung to life.

Despite their many differences, the two men start dating in New York. Jonathan worships Liza while Morrison idolizes Lizzo, but they both love to laugh and have sex, and what more does a couple need?

When Jonathan suggests that Morrison move into his apartment, Morrison gets cold feet. But a few months later, after COVID upended the world, they decided to quarantine at Morrison’s grandmother’s house in Rockland County, N.Y. Hiding out with his older lover at his grandmother’s during a global crisis seems like a ripe opportunity for comedy, but Morrison doesn’t give us many details other than that they developed their own affectionate form of nonsense talk.

As tensions arose a few months into their confinement, they took off for a now eerily empty Provincetown. The exact chronology of events is blurred by the way Morrison jumps around in time, but when Jonathan tests positive for COVID, no one suspects that in two weeks he’ll be on a ventilator.

“Sugar Daddy” does something that I haven’t seen much despite the extraordinary number of COVID deaths. It makes a record of one person’s sudden loss.

Jonathan is lovingly remembered, though his portrait is only sketched. Morrison misses his late partner’s gigantic belly laugh that would engulf everything in its orbit. The first time he heard it, Morrison assumed that Jonathan was on Molly, but he was just naturally high on humor.

Morrison’s observations of Jonathan take the form of quips. We’re told that Jonathan liked to order “no less than 400 appetizers for the table” when out with friends and that he left a generous mound of ashes that was easily divided by loved ones. Not wanting to be maudlin, Morrison sometimes comes off as shallow.

He is determined to stay true to his stand-up calling. Everything is fair game for laughs, including his glucose monitor, which in an interesting twist turns out to be a legacy of his relationship (and the unexpected meaning behind the show’s title).

There’s talk of “Sugar Daddy” moving to Broadway. The show is presented by some high-powered names, including Alan Cumming and Billy Porter. But comedy is subjective: What one person may find a laugh riot, another may dismiss as grating attention-seeking.

A self-described “millennial comedian,” Morrison doesn’t strike me as the cleverest crafter of jokes. He doesn’t have Hannah Gadsby’s verbal finesse, Alex Edelman’s zeitgeist radar or Mike Birbiglia’s off-beat wryness.

The strained delivery of punchlines made me wonder if Morrison had honed his stand-up act in noisy gay clubs over drink orders. I’m touched by his story and applaud his resilience, but “Sugar Daddy” didn’t provoke many memorable belly laughs from this sympathetic critic.