My fiancée is an avid horror fan, and had seen Rose Red fifteen years prior; I'd only heard of it in passing. Now that I've seen it, I can say it's one of my favorite horror films - definitely in the top ten. It might not be particularly horrific, but it's definitely a spooky, effective, and thoughtful take on the old haunted house trope.
Rose Red is an ABC miniseries from 2002, written by none other than Stephen King, and inspired loosely by Shirley Jackson's classic novel, The Haunting of Hill House. Rose Red follows paranormal researcher Dr. Joyce Reardon (Nancy Travis) as she assembles a team of powerful psychics to investigate the mysterious, Winchester-like mansion known as Rose Red, a rambling house infested with paranormal activity. While the mansion at first enthralls the investigators with its manifestations and ever-changing layout, it soon becomes clear that it is a trap designed to kill them and feed on their psychic energy forever. As the house becomes ever more powerful, and Joyce's obsession with proving paranormal activity spirals into madness, the team is pulled one by one into Rose Red's dark maw.
Let me get this out of the way first: Rose Red is Peak King. The script is like a Best Of reel from his previous work, particularly Carrie and The Shining, and as a King fan I gave a little squeal of delight every time I noticed another of his tropes. You can almost "read" the film like one of his novels, word for word, quirk for quirk; allowing King free reign with the script elevated what could have been a generic haunted-house story into an eerie nightmare. It's almost the Stephen King movie he never got to create, with an agreeable director who was willing to cater to the author's peculiar style and respect his brand of storytelling. His ghosts aren't jump-scare spooks, but snickering, demonic versions of their former lives, as much extruding from the minds of their victims as intruding on the veil of reality. If you like King, you're in for a treat; if you hate him and all his works and all his pomp and all his pride, this is definitely not the film for you.
If King is the hook, the cinematography is what reels you in. There are amazing shots of the mansion's interior, pulling back through corridors or crawling down staircases, slowly building the dreadful sense of the house as a powerful, engulfing presence. The exterior shots of the decaying, dense grounds and watchful façade crank up the paranoia to a fever pitch. The camera showcases the special effects without losing its focus, a sense of discipline that most recent horror films would do well to take note of. The effects themselves, which are a mixture of practical and film tricks with a dash of digital manipulation, don't overwhelm the action. One especially simple but effective scene involved a wall that, when subjected to psychic pressure, jumped backwards into a long corridor; all the rest of the house's shifting occurred off-camera, and it would have been nice to see more of the mansion rearranging itself.
There are a lot of cool horror scenes. In one, a statue removes its own face and opens its eyes, a particularly Dalì-like visual that brings to mind his more menacing works. In another, a malevolent lump in the carpet chases two characters down a corridor, transforming into a fanged monster; cleverly, we only see the transformation in shadow, making a potentially silly effect much more harrowing.
The acting is pretty good across the board: Nancy Travis really sells Dr. Reardon's childlike excitement for the paranormal as it sours into obsession and denial, her face moving from sly, twinkling amusement to twisted irrationality as the film progresses. Kevin Tighe puts in a solid performance as the kind, whimsical Victor Kandinsky, whose unhappy death should have made us cry; unfortunately the film didn't quite know what to do with his character, and we're left with a rather flat unemotionality at his demise. Similarly underutilized is the excellent Emily Deschanel, whose character Pam Asbury is uncertain and awkward while alive, but becomes a seductive, ethereal ghoul upon her death. Her best scene is with Victor when he, transfixed by an uncanny statue, doesn't notice her expression as her eyes turn blood-red...that visual was pure King, and Deschanel sold it. I actually shuddered.
The word that comes to mind with the acting is "restrained". In the first half of the film, this is a good thing, although Joyce does come across as oddly blasé at times; these are professionals, and their response to the manifestations are mostly wonder and curiosity. But by the second half, as the paranormal shit starts hitting the proverbial fan, this restraint becomes more and more absurd. Nick Hardaway is supposed to be a devil-may-care Brit, whose response to the paranormal is mostly snark; but Julian Sands plays him so woodenly that he comes across as thick. I laughed several times when Nick clearly sees a ghoulish phenomenon and responds with a placid stare, as though he's musing about what to have for lunch. I'm not sure if Julian Sands was wrong for the character as written, or if he just didn't belong in a horror film.
I also could have done without a couple of what I call, "King council" scenes, in which the characters sit around discussing things. In his written work, these served to pause the story and try to collect the wild threads of the plot into something coherent, under the guise of the group "deciding what to do next". I always hated reading these scenes, they brought the narrative to a screeching halt and killed the tension; they don't fare any better in this film, where you can sense the actors' awkwardness at having to sit around speaking lines that were boring on paper to begin with. Especially baffling were scenes where one of the team openly discusses killing psychic powerhouse Annie (Kimberly J. Brown) in order to loosen the house's grip; Annie's sister (Melanie Linskey) appears more sullen than horrified at the suggestion, and the other characters respond with a sort of ennui.
But the real bedevilment of Rose Red is the...wait for it...wait for it...pacing. The film has a slow burn, and this makes for a real sense of build-up in the first half; but as the third hour of the miniseries rolls around, you start to wonder if Rose Red has a second gear. You could fault King's writing for this - even diehard King fans will admit his novels tend to deflate near the end - but then again this is a film, with a dedicated director and editing team; couldn't they have injected some gas into the engine? Even a few minor cuts here and there, just a light pruning, would have improved the timing dramatically and given it much-needed snap. I'm not saying it was boring, rather the depiction dragged its feet while the plot was barreling toward its conclusion; there's a point at which the storyteller has to get out of the way and let gravity do the work.
Rose Red isn't perfect, obviously; but all in all it was effective and charming, and even had a couple of real shudders. If you like Stephen King, or are just interested in a more cerebral take on the haunted house trope, definitely give it a watch. I'll certainly remember Rose Red for a long time afterward.
Rick Out.
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