Miniseries Review: Stephen King's Rose Red

Rose Red (2002)
**

"Some houses are born bad"

So I got this miniseries before I even knew about the Stephen King Drinking Game. I also needed stupid things between "I am so angry at this I want to rage-quit" and "I forgot about the soundtrack and how HORRIFIC IT WAS" that will be the video game review. So...for now...

....THE MOVIE!


A psychology professor interested in the paranormal manages to get together a 'team of psychics' and yet somehow after a LITERAL RAIN OF STONES on a family's neighbor's home, parapsychology isn't studied because we have to have some sort of artificial tension. When you can get a team of ACTUAL PSYCHICS, one of whom HAS CAUSED STONES TO RAIN DOWN UPON HER NEIGHBORS AND WHO HURT A DOG SO BAD IT HAD TO BE PUT DOWN, you are officially in a world securely believing There Is No War in Ba-Sing-Se.

No, wait, this is Stephen King, I have to reference 'It' somehow, but I'm taking a shot for having to mention Maine in a review.

So the team of SEVEN PSYCHICS OF VARYING PSYCHIC ABILITIES, ALL OF WHOM CAN PSYCHIC AND IT SHOWS THEY CAN PSYCHIC UP ANY PSYCHIC THING, all go into the OBVIOUSLY EVIL HOUSE OF HAUNTINGS AND MURDER. The only thing to be the cherry on top of this King Sundae is that the house was also designed by the guy who did the Overlook Hotel.
Also, I don't care how rich you are, 40 acre mansion in the middle of turn-of-the-century Seattle isn't gonna fly.

My main issue is some of the storytelling with the professor and with Annie's (the main psychic) family, who are more non-entities and cardboard cutouts with one setting, all of which makes me upset because it's set in 2002, even then you don't treat autistic kids like this you asshats. Your daughter is AUTISTIC and PSYCHIC, not EVIL, and dogs don't bite without provocation or showing off multiple 'no touchie' signs. You also live in a world where you can get FIVE PSYCHICS into a room and at least TWO strong psychics in the SAME GENERAL AREA. It's great that you have bitter!Shining child and remade!Carrie as our focus but do we have to undermine the others because of that, to the point where they go into the house and everyone starts dying but it's ok, it's a 'dead cell' that I want to restart it because SCIENCE'? The house takes NORMAL PEOPLE in that history lesson the professor gives us to require multiple flashbacks...maybe it doesn't need psychic kids, but people who have no inherent ability to realize they're walking into death-trap? That would make it far more interesting, that in this case it's the ones that the professor thinks will be her 'bait' become the ones who can see the house as it really is, and who work to save the others trapped recently in the mansion before it's destruction.

Except for the professor, she can stay there. Also the 'happy ending' is bullshit. The Syfy Shining miniseries had a better 'happy ending'.

The Steven King Drinking Game: The Movie or Rose Red shows a lot of the issues with some of King's writing, or at least why there is a drinking game that is known for causing death. I also have issue with how they describe Seattle in the early 20th century (this is not a small town or a scenic overlook hotel, this is a city with a good harbor and a famous market. Even before the coffee) and with the way the antagonists to our main antagonist (who are, oddly, not protagonists but straw men of 'let's fire her because reasons'). That the house has only four construction deaths is not that odd (construction back then was deadly) and if you want to do something like the Winchester Mystery House, just do that house. It's story is freaky enough!

Final Drinking Game Score - 20/37 SHOTS.
Which is only so low because there are no bullies, unless you count the bad journalist who probably is only doing the dick!professor's work because his editor hates him, and the dick!professor who is, as his name suggests, a dick.