Roll Red Roll is a true-crime thriller that goes behind the headlines to uncover the deep-seated and social media-fueled "boys will be boys" culture at the root of high school sexual assault in America. At a preseason football party in small-town Steubenville, Ohio, a heinous crime took place: the assault of a teenage girl by members of the beloved high school football team. What transpired would garner national attention and result in the sentencing of two key offenders. But... (Full plot summary below)
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Roll Red Roll is a true-crime thriller that goes behind the headlines to uncover the deep-seated and social media-fueled "boys will be boys" culture at the root of high school sexual assault in America. At a preseason football party in small-town Steubenville, Ohio, a heinous crime took place: the assault of a teenage girl by members of the beloved high school football team. What transpired would garner national attention and result in the sentencing of two key offenders. But it was the disturbing social media evidence uncovered online by crime blogger Alex Goddard that provoked the most powerful questions about the case, and about the collusion of teen bystanders, teachers, parents and coaches to protect the assailants and discredit the victim. As it painstakingly reconstructs the night of the crime and its aftermath, Roll Red Roll uncovers the ingrained rape culture at the heart of the incident, acting as a cautionary tale about what can happen when teenage social media bullying runs rampant and adults look the other way. The film unflinchingly asks: "why didn't anyone stop it?
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| Toronto StarPeter HowellNancy Schwartzman's devastating real-life thriller documents a shocking sexual assault in a tight-knit community, and the role of social media in compounding the felony but also helping to solve it. |
| Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSchwartzman’s film is a strong, cogent examination of outrage, coolly and carefully documented, one text, tweet and reckoning at a time. |
| The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisA tough but essential watch, Roll Red Roll documents how a sexual assault in a declining Appalachian town became an international cause célèbre. Shots of near-empty streets and an abandoned steel mill provide a melancholy frame for behavior that seems horrifyingly incomprehensible. |
| ObserverOliver JonesWhile it is good that a director as versed on the subject of consent as Schwartzman is bringing her unwavering eye to the problem, it makes it all the more painful that we seem even further away from solving the issue then we were on that fateful August night in Ohio seven years ago. |
| The New YorkerAnthony LaneIf Roll Red Roll feels raw and pressing, six and a half years after the event, that’s because it is set on one of the world’s most contested borders: the place where online justice meets, and chafes against, the due process of the law. Expect worse battles to come. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreDirector Nancy Schwartzman takes us into a crime, the investigation of it, the impact of reporting on that crime and the changing tides of local and national public opinion about what we used to call “date rape” in this gripping, disturbing and brilliant “anatomy of a rape” film. |
| RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSome of the filmmaking here is a little frustrating, but Roll Red Roll is ultimately an insightful portrait of an entire city shaken and altered by one heinous act, amplified by modern technology. |
| VarietyOwen GleibermanThe phenomenon of rape culture has emerged, more than anywhere, from the frat house (and from spring break, that ritualized bacchanal for kids who aren’t necessarily in frats), and it has been growing there — metastasizing — for decades. Roll Red Roll captures, with potent power, how the “If it feels good, wreck it” ethos of the beer-pong drink-till-you-submit forced “hookup” is finding more and more of a home among high schoolers. |
| Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckIt provides a powerful depiction of the blame-the-victim culture that has so long dominated the national discussion about rape and which only now thankfully seems to be receding. Although there's clearly a long, long way to go. |
| The Young FolksNathanael HoodSchwartzman is careful to depict the police involved in the case as diligent, honorable professionals tasked with the impossible case of getting confessions from terrified teenagers -- but they are still shown as largely ineffective. |
