Rish Outfield's reviews
Crap, this is going to be a long one. I'm not the world's biggest Stephen King fan, but I'm the biggest one I know, so I tried to be thorough and write a review worthy of my favourite writer. And here goes...
One of the little habits I have that infuriates tyranist is that I like to read critics' reviews of movies I'm interested in. Tyranist prefers to see what he wants to see, based on its marketing, its vibe, or its own potential merits. But in being the resident horror movie expert since I was around ten years old, I consider myself to be an authority, a critic, and often I like to compare myself to other critics. For example, when I saw What Lies Beneath, I read Roger Ebert's review and was impressed (in myself, not in Mr. Ebert) that his sentiments so echoed mine. If the critics disagree with me, I think about it, wondering in what ways they are right, in what ways I am right.
Unfortunately (and I think this is where tyranist's gripe is), I often read these reviews BEFORE I've gone to see the film. If the reviews are negative, I tend not to want to go. They have a tendency to dissuade me, to influence me, to alter my expectations or views. So, when I glanced at an early review of Stephen King's Rose Red, before it aired, and saw that the reviewer found it stupid and much funnier than scary, I admit that I watched it with a critical eye, looking for funny moments or stupidity.
It usually goes without saying in a Stephen King adaptation that the book was better. This is no exception. Rose Red starred one-time ax murderer suspect Nancy Travis as Joyce Reardon, a college professor who leads an expedition into Rose Red, a massive haunted house in Seattle, Washington. She goes there to obtain proof of the spiritual world, and so rents the services of a number of talented folks, including a visionary, a post-cognate (I like this word), a telepath, an automatic writer, and an autistic girl with enormous psychic and telekinetic ability. As well as her boyfriend (Matt Keesler) who owns and fears the house. The house was built by a rich (and insane) society woman who continues to live there, along with the two-dozen souls the house has eaten in the past 80 years. Reardon explains that without victims to feed on, the house is now nothing more than "a dead cell." So, of course, they give it a jumpstart.
It lasted three nights and I took notes each night. Early on, I got the feeling the story had been stretched (like butter over too much bread) to fit three nights, when two would've been sufficient. Time was being killed, basically, to fill three nights. In fact, I wouldn't complain if they cut a half hour out of it for the video version.
Day 1: First installments are hard, because you're introducing the situation, all the characters, and trying to present many threads that will be picked up later (just ask George Lucas), but this was well-done. It told a lot of the history of the house in this episode, which bothered me until I realized they weren't even going to get into the house this night. Then I kind of enjoyed it.
There were two great scares, both involving the same character. In one, there's a tremendous amount of blood in the refrigerator. In the other, there were two horrible-looking dead kitchen visitors. I was pretty sure we weren't supposed to like the character of Emery the nerd (especially by the second installment), but I did. He's a sort of combination of Harold Lauder and Eddie Kaspbrack (yes, I'm a fan), and he was my favourite character. Both of the above scares involved him, and his response to them is unusual and amusing.
One thing that didn't work was the over-acting, manic scene with Nancy Travis accosting David Duke with blood on her hands. It was bizarre and really awkward, and was probably my least favourite scene of them all. Still, when this night ended, I wanted more, and that's a success.
Day 2: This was the weakest episode, and it felt longest, with repetition and time-killing (including a lot of static shots of the house). It's weird, there were moments that just didn't seem to work. Lines that just sounded phoney. Phantom bees? Joyce Reardon was just a bit too angry and/or defensive. It made her hard-ish to like, like a feminist that takes everything you say as an insult. One character was tormented by the house for a long, long time, only to have her character die off-screen.
There were a few nice moments (but fewer). Julian Sands was pretty good--the only one of the group I knew by name. Stephen King's requisite cameo was cute and actually made me laugh. There was an interesting twist with the changed answering machine message. The ending, however, was WAY anticlimactic. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people didn't come back due to it.
Day 3: For those who did stick around, though, I felt that the third installment was the most rewarding, with some nice surprises, and a cool, mean-spirited scare or two. They dared hack off one character's fingers. One third episode sequence is horribly cruel and disturbing (I'm talking defecatingly evil stuff)--nice, sick stuff--especially for a made for television film.
I knew that David Duke died during filming, so I couldn't help but pay attention, wondering how his part was intended, if doubles were used, etc. For the most part, it wasn't distracting.
What was distracting was that a lot of the mini-series seemed poorly edited--almost haphazardly--like a workprint in a test screening. There's no excuse, because it had been in the can for months before it aired.
The character of Joyce goes more nuts as it goes along, and I actually enjoyed that, especially when the other characters started to notice and it wasn't just me. Because I liked Emery, I kept my eye on the watch counting down to his death. Which brings me to another interesting observation--not all the characters I expected to live survived, and certainly a couple of deaths came as something of a surprise.
This was the second mini-series Mr. King (or Unca Steve, as I'm wont to call the man) wrote directly for the small screen (the other being the quite-excellent Storm of the Century), and I love Unca Steve, but Rose Red was not his finest moment. Not all of it was his fault, the editing was erratic, the constant repetition of house shots, padding out the length to fit five hours, the annoying segueways into commercial breaks, the death of one of the stars, etc. But let's be honest here: the bulk of the fault lies with him. ABC gives him a lot of control over these mini-series, and he is the brainchild behind it all.
A lot of the long, awkward dialogue would've been expressed in thoughts or just exposition in a book, so it wasn't entirely a joke that the book would've been better. Some details that seem contrived when explained or some that were not explained at all would've been handled much better in novel form.
Still, some of the motivations are unbelievably unbelievable (believe me). What about the cell phone? Some characters are pursued near endlessly, others are killed near instantly. Some things that would make me (or worse, a normal person) go insane simply startle or disturb these characters. A lot of the scares seem rather pointless because the characters are neither killed nor scared off. Some scenes were neither scary nor funny nor interesting... they were just confusing. What do you chalk that up to? Badly directed? Bad editing? Badly performed? Badly written?
But it wasn't terrible, and the positives outweighed the negatives. At least one character I wanted to live died, and that's something King does well: make you like someone and then do terrible things to them. King combined many of the themes and ideas from his short stories and novels ("The Shining," "It Grows On You," "Firestarter," "1409," "Carrie," "It," etc.) as well as a tip of the hat to Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" and probably Richard Matheson's "Hell House." Not much of it was original, but there were a lot of different scare tactics. One unique trick was that some of the ghosts were a combination of puppets and CGI, a cool effect. The music by Gary Chang, which featured a lot of piano work, was nice. All in all, I enjoyed the mini-series. I felt it was worth my time, it ended with a bang, and though not all the scares worked, I didn't laugh when I was supposed to be scared. If I had listened to that reviewer, I would have missed out. When the credits finally rolled, I had watched something flawed, but I'd had a good time.
Line To Remember: "The important thing is not to go off wandering."
I'd Recommend It To: King fans and patient Haunted House buffs.
Note: Rose Red aired on the week that King announced his retirement from writing. Now, whether he'll pull a Michael Jordan remains to be seen, but I think I took the announcement into effect when reviewing the final installment of the mini-series. I love Unca Steve and his work has meant more to me than any other author (indeed, probably more than all other authors combined). I'll miss him greatly, even if some of his recent work has been less than stellar.
Note 2: One major gripe I have about miniseries and made-for-TV movies - - I HATE how they begin each commercial break by showing a snippet of a scene that's coming up. They all do it, and there's almost nothing I hate more, including L.A. traffic and canker sores.