Stephen King's Rose Red (2002)

 

Director: Craig R. Baxley

Screenplay: Stephen King

Cast: Nancy Travis as Dr. Joyce Reardon, Matt Keeslar as Steve Rimbauer, Melanie Lynskey as Rachel "Sissy" Wheaton, Kimberly J. Brown as Annie Wheaton, Judith Ivey as Cathy Kramer, Matt Ross as Emery Waterman, Julian Sands as Nick Hardaway, Emily Deschanel as Pam Asbury, Kevin Tighe as Victor "Vic" Kandinsky, David Dukes as Dr. Carl Miller

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows)

 

Well, I’ve never heard Glen Miller out of a flower before.

Unlike other Stephen King adaptations, this is not actually adapting one of the legendary author’s stories to the screen, but is an entirely original tale King himself wrote the screenplay of. This one has some history, in which in the nineties he had pitched a haunted house story to Steven Spielberg, remaking The Haunting (1963), the legendary horror film adapted from Shirley Jackson’s seminal novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959)¹. Spielberg would produce the 1999 remake of The Haunting, whilst here King’s original idea would finally find its form in an entirely original story, a four plus hour mini-series, directed by former stunt man, former stunt coordinator, and the director of Stone Cold (1991), an action movie attempting to launch the film career of American football player Brian Bosworth. Craig R. Baxley would become a regular director of Stephen King mini-series during the 2000s, there is nothing but playful humour in the later reference.

Effectively this does reimaging Jackson’s seminal supernatural novel and original version of The Haunting, if by way of influences in real life. One clear influence is the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, home of Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearms magnate William Wirt Winchester. Alongside stories of the mansion being haunted, it was also a building Sarah Winchester had constantly under construction, building mazes and weird unconventional additions to the building which it can be legitimately possible to get lost within.

A college professor Dr. Joyce Reardon (Nancy Travis), with a very liberal attitude to the paranormal, is self funding an expedition to Rose Red, the equivalent to the Winchester House but with a significantly larger body count in its tragic history, and absolutely the example of something so evil you should just torch the place rather than enter it. Deciding regardless of the risk to collect together a group of psychics, she wishes to prove ghosts exists with what eventually develops into the maddened zeal of Captain Ahab and a white whale. Among the psychics brought into the manor is Annie (Kimberly J. Brown), who gets a prologue introducing her, who is a trope in King’s work, that of figures with disabilities or significant ostracization in society possessing unnatural abilities. As someone born with autism myself, I was concerned – with childhood memories of Dreamcatcher (2003), a notorious King adaptation for the silver screen where, alongside “shit weasels”, there was Duddits, a disabled character with unnatural abilities which was broadly dealt even from the perspective as a younger viewer. This was more so the case here as Annie is explicitly depicted as autistic here and could be a misfire. Thankfully it is not the case – she would be on the more severe spectrum in difficulty in communication, not directly communicating with people, acts of repetition which even I do which offer comfort or pure enjoyment (her obsession with Glen Miller, to rearranging dominos, which do not come off as broad. As a character among some broad (and questionable) stereotypes, she comes off well. Even when characters start making more crueler comments on her, as a person who would need to be in care even if her paranormal abilities are more advanced, it comes from when feces hits the fan and it comes clear. As someone ultra-gifted to the point she can rain stones from the sky, placing her into Rose Red, which can use her, was like bringing a nuclear missile to Godzilla, so the tone does not feel insulting but contextually when other characters start to lose it and others have already died.

The broadness of some of the characters here is an issue in other cases. Among the psychics is Emery (Matt Ross), whose pre-cognitive warnings from ghosts about Rose Red are useless when he has all the bills to pay from his mother’s overspending, even if you leave the fridge a bloodbath. His mother herself is a broad take on the domineering mother which you can accuse as being a tasteless stereotype, the large figured and overprotective stereotype with no real point to her but to be a grotesque domineering stereotype. Rather than say, for a good example, what “mother” is to Norman Bates in Psycho (1960), this plays to stereotypes of ugliness which have not aged well. You will also have the surprise that, with an arsehole stereotype of a rational skeptic in Dr. Carl Miller (David Dukes), a fellow professor who wishes to bump Dr. Reardon off her tenure for her “irrational” believe in ghosts, King punts a figure totally opposite for what he has done with Christian zealots. Some may be angry about him, but let us be blunt, Marcia Gay Harden’s Christian fundamentalist in The Mist (2007), one of the more acclaimed King adaptations from the 2000s, was also a broad one-dimensional stereotype, but with the unfortunate reality that too many Christians are terrible examples of their faith, making it more digestible to kick them in the gonads in horror films for many as they are more frequently a problem in modern politics and culture. It posits, the more of King’s work I have grow up with, a family collecting the films and mini-series, and reading his work, that the author just despises holier than thou figures of all types, authority for him delusional, especially as, initially sympathetic, the Captain Ahab comparison is perfect for Dr. Joyce Reardon. He is entirely sympathetic to the psychics themselves, all likable and with real powers among those here, but Reardon’s hair trigger temper on the subject of the supernatural warns that, wanting to prove it, she will sacrifice people and eventually be burnt by the supernatural fire she wishes to claim. King follows a well worn trope in horror, a good one, of the dangers of acquiring unnatural knowledge without realizing the respect and risk than entails with the occult.

The mini-series is a broad, brash haunted house metaphorically, not subtle in the slightest and spooky like a jaunted spooky train ride in four plus hours, split over three parts originally. Aptly the setting is cool, like a great haunted house, including its influence from the Winchester Mystery House in some of the more unconventional sets built, such as an upside down room or the tiny model version of Rose Red in the lounge. A shame is felt that they could have lent on the optical illusions of the location, even on a TV mini-series budget, especially as one of the aspects that Rose Red has is its ability to expand and change rooms to trap victims. A lot of the first half, taking a part before even getting to Rose Red, is bringing up the back-story of the home, which becomes more a nicely ghoulish series of disappearances, deaths and a man choking to death on an apple. Even if there is some violence, and severed fingers, the lack of gore, and only a subtle nod to the morbid and decayed, feels like an actual haunted amusement attraction, especially as the mini-series is ambitious (despite the seams being visible) in using unsubtle CGI for evil statures or bees. The difference is that, as a story, it is a spooky movie allowed to be more fleshed out in its longer length, and that this is a haunted house ride where you get to go with Julian Sands, the British actor arguably the highlight as a likable English psychic who takes to the environment with common sense and white.

In terms of King works, adaptations or original ones, the broad strokes in characterization and wishing to have a complete lack of subtlety in the premise, neither next to The Haunting or the Shirley Jackson source material, are not going to leave it as appealing to the more acclaimed adaptations. The Shining (1980) this is not, and infamous King hated that adaptation and a 1997 TV mini-series properly told the source novel, so what he considers the appropriate tone for a story of a haunted house may not appeal to everyone. Personally there was a lot of fun for me here, in mind to that comparison to a literal haunted house ride than a profound psychodrama.

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1) Stephen King's Rose Red Was Originally A Remake Of The Haunting, written by Michael Kennedy and published for Screen Rant on March 5th 2021.