Rose Red (2002)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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!

This movie was fairly entertaining for want of anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon, but as everything by Stephen King it had no depth - and it is not one of his best works either.Firstly, it was much too long. You cannot stretch out a haunted house movie for over four hours, because the viewers get used to the scary things in it. For instance, the two old female inhabitants who have stayed on in the house as ghosts, look really creepy the first and second time you see them. But the third or fourth time, you have become "friends" with them..! And then there became too many dead people who turned into ghosts, to be shocking or even interesting anymore...IF you want to write a whole miniseries about a haunted house, I think there must be some other strong storyline as well, apart from the haunting. For instance a treasure hunt or a love story.Secondly, the movie is so obviously a plagiarism of "The Haunting" from 1963, and also the remake from 1999. The similarities simply are too many for them to be coincidences.Thirdly, and worst, was the high piano music and/or "creepy sounds" almost throughout the whole movie. It was so loud, that it was very difficult to hear what the actors were saying - I had to try to read their lips! But I wonder if this mistake can really have been possible in the original - it seems incredible! Maybe someone has manipulated my copy of it (I downloaded it from the internet).Fourthly, it did not have any really good scares. Not the kind that make you jump, when you suddenly see something horrible. Many times the music etc. seemed to build up to this kind of scare - but one was always disappointed by what one really saw. As so often with Stephen King, the scares were more unpleasant and gory than those "pure and high" scares in old Gothic ghost stories - that I think are the ideal in horror..!I will remember two scenes from this movie though, because they were very funny. Firstly, the "nerd" who (in the beginning) was quite indifferent to the powers who tried to scare him off, and just told them "try doing that to someone who isn't broke". (Because he needed the money he would get for taking part too much to care about anything else.) And secondly the very last pictures, when Joyce, the career-hungry, female researcher who had led them all into the mess and then died in the house herself in the end, was herself one of the ghosts in the haunted house - and obviously had resigned to her fate. Of some reason I thought this very funny - maybe because I have known some ruthless career women just like her..!

First of all i can't believe that i missed this M-S all these years, but i saw this on a Stephen King profile here at IMDb and i rent it and i'm very pleased that i did.From the beginning i had high hopes about this and those hopes came true, and i really enjoyed. BTW "haunted houses" have always been in my priority list.Script was good acting too especially Annie (seemed so real), last ten minutes scene was the most enjoyable part. Hoverer the thing that bothered me is that Judith Ivey wasn't involved as much as she deserves.I recommend this to anyone who skipped this "unintentionally" like i did.

First thing first: This "movie" is awful.Statutory Warning: Watching this may cause nausea, suffocation, self-loathing, regret, worthlessness, self-hatred, and other such symptoms.I watched many Mad TV skits making fun of stereotypical movies and TV shows, as well as many Hustler XXX video parodies of TV series. This excuse of a movie ()or TV series or whatever could have possibly been watchable as either of those, but as a full-length feature, this is absolutely horrible stuff! Horribly bad acting, never-ending story, pathetic dialogs, an exercise in triviality. Even before the trip begins, I could predict who all people will die, and who would possibly survive. My prediction was wrong only in the case of the heir; all others that I predicted would die, did die. My guess regarding the survivors also was correct.Does that mean that I'm a genius? Hell, no. I am just a lonely loser, who watched huge number of such trash, and so there is nothing even remotely new or unique about such work.This was torture porn for me. I mean, I was invited for a dinner at a colleague's place, and since I ran out on excuses (I had declined 2-3 earlier such invitations), I had to go. Her and mine tastes in films are mutually exclusive, and so when I arrived there and this movie was playing, I was rather sure that I was there for 90 minutes of pain and agony.I was wrong! I was to be tortured for 4 hours or so by a meaningless, painfully bad excuse of a movie. This movie is so bad that it does not even qualify for "so bad that it is good" category. It's like how Tyler Perry would make Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. I mean, why else would Nancy Travis be trying so hard to look and act serious in her role, while she possibly knew that she was the absolute wrong choice for it? Imagine, for example, Marlon Wayans, trying to act a Marlon Brando. That is what I am talking about.To make matters worse, I was surrounded by 3 enthusiastic people determined to watch it till the finis (even when I reminded that it would drag until 1-30 AM), and my colleague, the host, kept on mentioning how this was originally made as a TV documentary. Yes, she used the word "documentary", really. If this is documentary, then I am Rockefeller.I've nothing good to say about this movie or whatever, except for the fact that the food was good; she really cooked well. I lost 4 hours of my lie, and a Saturday evening watching this. I could have much more enjoyed sitting in my apartment all alone drinking cheap wine and watching COPS and Cheaters and all that trash!