A professor assembles a team of psychics to explore a haunted house in Stephen King's 2002 miniseries Rose Red. I enjoyed this thing way more than it possibly deserves. King is treading very familiar territory, director Craig R. Baxley has all the weaknesses of a run-of-the-mill, '90s television drama director, and of the ensemble cast, only Julian Sands and Melanie Lynskey are really good. But I found this series quite cosy.
Longtime readers of this blog will remember I have a big soft spot for haunted house stories, especially stories of people trapped in a house, and especially especially such stories with labyrinthine houses with shifting dimensions, which this one is. I think it goes back to an episode of Simon and Simon with a similar premise I watched late at night as a child.
Rose Red was recommended to me by the groundskeeper at the school where I work and he let me borrow his DVDs of the series. He knows nothing of my love for such stories. I looked for other odd coincidences in the tale and noticed my name, Adam, belongs to one of the former inhabitants of the house and another character disappeared in 1911 in April--I was born on April 11th, 1979. I love stuff like this. By the way, if you're thinking now I should read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, I already did, on Caitlin's recommendation. But as it's one of the few books--by strange coincidence!--that was contained in one of the boxes sent to me in Japan, I've been thinking of reading it again.
Rose Red aired two years after House of Leaves was published though it was supposedly in development for at least seven years. It contains an odd number of references to Ghostbusters which I think is actually a clever bit of misdirection on Stephen King's part. The paranormal psychology professor, Joyce, is played by Nancy Travis in a flat, over the top way that actually starts to make sense later on (still, I suspect she's playing a role meant for Julia Roberts). She butts heads with the dean who seeks to dismiss her for her devotion to studying the paranormal.
Ah, '90s TV over-the-shoulder shots.
She hopes to finally get evidence of ghosts by assembling a team of psychics to stay at a famed haunted house. I enjoyed the introduction of the various characters but poor Julian Sands, who went missing in January this year while hiking and still hasn't been found, easily outshines everyone as a calm, insightful gentleman. Melanie Lynskey is also good as the big sister of a super powered psychic teenager.
It's not until an hour in that they all finally arrive at the house, at which point everything is delightfully turned on its head. I almost wonder if King asked himself, "What if the Ghostbusters stayed at the Overlook Hotel?" and Red Rose presents what he imagined would be the outcome.
This must have been one of the last of an era of TV movies. It was shot in 4:3 and looks very cheap compared to the cinematic productions on streaming services to-day. I think a strong case could be made for King's original script to be readapted to-day for Netflix or something because the writing is certainly equal to better production values.
But there's something about cheap TV sets being employed for labyrinthine haunted houses. Such sets tend to deprive the viewer of a sense of the house's exterior, creating an impression of woodpanelled corridors in a void. As though punching through a wall would reveal empty space rather than a potential escape route. God, I love it.
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