Rose Red (2002)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is one of those things that have been done before but that King does in a way that you might not expect. Having read Shirley Jackson's book that this was inspired by, and knowing how King likes to play his movies/TV shows/mini series, I am still always amazed at how spooked out I get with Rose Red.It is long, but you won't regret it. Great acting, spooky house, and a creepy backstory make this one of my favorites. There are snarky comments, and for those die-hard King fans, references and similarities to other beloved stories. Enjoy!!!

And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have The House which really likes to eat folks with pants and shoes on - i wonder if Rose Red also eats censors just as well?Through the time, Rose Red seem to have swallowing a lot of different "things", not only a nice bunch of peoples, but also loads of blurry CGI and two - believe it or not - vampires; how they got there must be a story of its own (you'll have to discover them for yourself!) At least thats the impression i got when i watched the 3 episodes. As always, i don't really have any higher expectations of Kings movie adaptions, since only four has been proved good; The Stand, Pet Cemetery, Carrie and The Cycle of a Werewolf, and they where aired and published long time ago. Rose Red has the great potential to be a nicely ghost story, or at least a mediocre one, and much in this flick are acceptable to a certain point, despite some character frustration and plot holes, such as irrational behavior and lack of cognitive thinking - if they all had some psychic telepathic ability, why did everyone failed to see the most obviously outcome in their situation and so on. The characters in a movie, are for me, the building block of the story, and the misshape of Rose Red was't really the cheaply CGI effects, nor the ridiculous looking ghosts of Ellen Rimbauer and April, which maybe unintentionally made me chuckle from time to time, it was Annie and Nick - oh man! I just wanted to kill that authentic girl - which didn't really acted authentic, and Nick, whit his heaped persona that makes the skin go goosebumps and that British accent which made my body shivering - oh man! Sorry if im lacking words for it - but "begone!" with you! Funny enough; Rose Reds antagonist among the "ghost hunting" group Emery Waterman seem to be - in the straight opposite direction of what King might had in his mind - the one with most common sense. In contrast, i had the feeling that Emery was supposed to create uncertainty within the group, hence making them weaker against Rose Reds ghosts.Rose Red itself had that suspense you might expecting from a Haunted - House movie, and it has to be said that the music with all those whispering voices must be one of the greater choices in any of Stephen Kings movies, i really liked it. The screenplay showing various parts of the house, both inside and from above, makes your imagine go wild, thoughts such as "what about if i where there...", it adds a lot to the creepiness. A lot of thing could be recognized from other movies, i don't need to mention movies such as The Haunting and The Legend of Hell House, but it still was acceptable levels of inspirations from outside; but Glenn Miller - oh man - that song playing over and over again, as if Stephen King really wasn't able to select something else! I never wanna hear that song again, and the fact that the song even appears in The Shining hurts, because its something you can watch when nothing better is to be reached a cold, dark autumn evening!Creepiness: 5 Scariness: 2 Sound/music: 5 (without Glenn Miller) Visualization: 5Thanks!

At his best, Stephen King has good ideas and writes excruciatingly bad prose. And even the good ideas vanish in the translation to the screen. In my experience, there are only two good movies made from King's books--Christine and The Dead Zone (The Shining is Kubrick's biggest disappointment.) Rose Red is the worst haunted house film I have ever seen, and in the top 1% of worst movies I have ever seen. Gregory, the infallible movie cat, who normally responds to bad films with a disdainful sniff and a malodorous trip to the litter box, nearly made the same comment in from of the television about 10 minutes into the second segment.Where oh where can we start? Let's start with the special effects, if only to dismiss them. Pretty as they are, they dress up a pig. And as we all should know, you can dress up a big, put lipstick on her, and call her Monique--but she is still a pig. No bad film was ever made good with special effects--and this turkey is a prime example.How about the cast? On the whole pretty good, with a couple of veterans like Judith Ivey and Julian Sands, both of whom are capable of enlivening a film. Not here.And now, the plot. Oh, the plot. What a dreadful mess. First of all, it's a mishmash of elements from far better work. The house that's alive and malignant? And the experiment with psychics? Look no further than the best of all haunted house movies, the original version of The Haunting (not the remake!). Even King used it before in The Shining. The child medium? Firestarter, and any of a dozen different films and movies. And The Haunting did more in two hours than this in well over four.And why? To begin with, everything, including the kitchen sink and all the the plumbing, has been tossed in, with decidedly ill effect. We have academic politics. We have a mad scientist in Nancy Travis's character, who is so annoying that it's a wonder that the rest of the investigators didn't roll her up in a carpet and jump up and down, up and down, crushing her like Nero did Poppea. For heaven's sake, we even have a nerd with a neurotic smothering mother--a veritable field day for Freud.And what is worse--far far worse--is that the whole preposterous farrago makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. Why does writing "Open the doors" 100 times open the doors? If the house is the evil entity, why does its influence extend far the house. And, for that matter, given the aerial shots of the house in the middle of downtown Seattle, where the devil is all the open space in which characters keep getting lost? And we do not get to see the house blown up at the end? A terrible cheat-perhaps the SFX budget ran out. And, to cap it all, the dialogue is written--and delivered (with a few exceptions) in a fever pitch of hysteria that heightens the overall sense of--well, confusion is perhaps the kindest word for it.Four hours on DVD, six on television with breaks. For heaven's sake, save yourself time and brain cells. Rent a good film like the original version of The Haunting or The Uninvited (Ruth Hussy, Ray Milland.) Why anyone watches this festering heap of poo is beyond me.

I really enjoyed this. It is very good, very well made and the acting is very good as well by everyone. The pace is good and it's engaging. However,......sometimes it takes a long time for the actors to play out their scenes, take you to the place in the house they want to be and then......something happens that you anticipate as being very scary only to see something very mild. In other words, it isn't exactly a frightening film. It is more mysterious. If you are in the mood for a good haunted mansion film then this will do the trick. If you are looking for intense scares, you might be disappointed. The special effects are good but not fantastic. This is story & character driven. Some scenes play out a little bit too long and end a little flat. I think the characters would have been much more shocked by the situations they find themselves in but they seem to brush things off pretty easy. Sometimes it has a 'made-for-tv' feel.