To get the obvious parallel out of the way: yes, the plot of "Rose Red" is a LOT like "The Haunting of Hill House". The basic elements are all there: a creepy old house where "something awful" happened long ago, a slightly obsessive paranormal investigator, a group of psychic volunteers--one of them an innocent conduit meant to 'awaken' the house--an heir looking to turn a quick buck on a dubious inheritance...check, check, and check.
The differences, however, throw the whole thing off-kilter enough that "Rose Red" works on its own. Notwithstanding some laughable special effects and a few performances hammy enough to be served for Easter dinner, this is a series worth watching.
Rose Red, the ancestral home of the Rimbauer family, was cursed from the beginning (a natural consequence of having been built atop that haunted house chestnut: an ancient Indian burial ground). Ellen Rimbauer, the widow of the builder, led a miserable and emotionally stunted life. To escape from her misery, she dabbled in the occult and eventually died in the house along with her daughter, April, her maid/lover/familiar, Sukeena, and various other visitors. After Ellen's death, tour groups paid to go through the house...but the tour groups kept coming up short one member at the end. The house has been abandoned for many years.
Enter Professor Joyce Reardon (toothily played by Nancy Travis), a psychologist with an obsessive bent toward the paranormal. Threatened with the loss of her university position--presumably for being a bitchy crackpot--she is determined to prove her theories by turning Rose Red into an Island of Misfit Psychic Toys: nervously religious Cathy (Judith Ivey), shrill, sniveling Emery (Matt Ross), phlegmatic Vic (Kevin Tighe), tentative Pam (Emily Deschanel), suave and calming Nick (Julian Sands), and autistic Annie (Kimberly J. Brown) who is the aforementioned psychic conduit. Annie's sister, Rachel,(Melanie Lynskey) comes along to care for Annie during the experiment but has no psychic powers. Neither does Steve Rimbauer (Matt Keesler), the remaining Rimbauer heir--who happens to be schtupping Dr. Reardon and is happy to let her use the house to regain her professional footing.
The series veers from the predictable (lengthening hallways, breathing walls, a sinister doll-house) to the grotesquely sublime (the demise and reappearance of several members of the party, all of them looking sly and pale and miserably, gloriously dead when they shuffle back on-stage). A few performances fall magnificently, headlong into caricature, most notably Emery, who is so disgustingly whiny and unlikable that he calls to mind Franklin, the vile, wheelchair-bound younger brother of Sally in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". When Emery's neurotically overprotective mother Kay (Laura Kenny) shows up and begins gnawing at the scenery, the whole thing threatens to degenerate into cartoonishness...but the cast manages to pull it out and and give the viewer the genuinely creepy impression that the relationship between Emery and his mother is the unhealthiest thing in the house at that moment--given the stuff going on in Rose Red, that's saying something.
One central performance left me unsatisfied: Kimberly J. Brown, as the autistic psychic Annie, relies pretty heavily on theatrically portentous looks and the constant ghostly background noise of Annie's favorite song, "Theme from A Summer Place". There's no Rain Man virtuosity at work here, just a lot of dull staring off into the distance. At the end of the series, when Annie begins to speak, her laughably fake stammer fails utterly to convey the wonder of a non-verbal autistic person talking for the first time. You get the feeling she is not so much autistic as just backward and bratty. Melanie Lynsky's Rachel manages to be believably terrified of, and protective over, Annie--but Annie and Rachel's mother and father, who show up briefly, are so ham-handed in their effort to be BAD PEOPLE that they might have stepped straight out of an After-School Special about abusive parents.
Several reviewers have mentioned that the end of the movie, when all of the ghosts in the house close in on Dr. Reardon to make her a permanent resident of Rose Red, left them cold. I have to disagree. Dr. Reardon is cheerfully unlikable from the very beginning, with a toothy smile that never quite reaches her eyes and the shifty instincts of a nutria rat. I had no trouble believing that her increasingly manic efforts to control the people, the experiment, and ultimately Rose Red itself came from her own personality. She was not infected by the house; the house recognized her as a kindred spirit. The house knew she was awful and set her up for a brutal finish. The ghosts who take her down include Nick, Cathy, and Vic--all of whom died because she refused to listen to reason about how dangerous the house really was. The very last scene, where ghost-Joyce gazes smugly out the attic window, is both totally predictable, and totally eerie and unsettling in the best possible way.
Yes, the movie is derivative, but it has some terribly effective moments. Ultimately it's satisfying and rich in the guilty way of eating something delicious that you know is not good for you.
The differences, however, throw the whole thing off-kilter enough that "Rose Red" works on its own. Notwithstanding some laughable special effects and a few performances hammy enough to be served for Easter dinner, this is a series worth watching.
Rose Red, the ancestral home of the Rimbauer family, was cursed from the beginning (a natural consequence of having been built atop that haunted house chestnut: an ancient Indian burial ground). Ellen Rimbauer, the widow of the builder, led a miserable and emotionally stunted life. To escape from her misery, she dabbled in the occult and eventually died in the house along with her daughter, April, her maid/lover/familiar, Sukeena, and various other visitors. After Ellen's death, tour groups paid to go through the house...but the tour groups kept coming up short one member at the end. The house has been abandoned for many years.
Enter Professor Joyce Reardon (toothily played by Nancy Travis), a psychologist with an obsessive bent toward the paranormal. Threatened with the loss of her university position--presumably for being a bitchy crackpot--she is determined to prove her theories by turning Rose Red into an Island of Misfit Psychic Toys: nervously religious Cathy (Judith Ivey), shrill, sniveling Emery (Matt Ross), phlegmatic Vic (Kevin Tighe), tentative Pam (Emily Deschanel), suave and calming Nick (Julian Sands), and autistic Annie (Kimberly J. Brown) who is the aforementioned psychic conduit. Annie's sister, Rachel,(Melanie Lynskey) comes along to care for Annie during the experiment but has no psychic powers. Neither does Steve Rimbauer (Matt Keesler), the remaining Rimbauer heir--who happens to be schtupping Dr. Reardon and is happy to let her use the house to regain her professional footing.
The series veers from the predictable (lengthening hallways, breathing walls, a sinister doll-house) to the grotesquely sublime (the demise and reappearance of several members of the party, all of them looking sly and pale and miserably, gloriously dead when they shuffle back on-stage). A few performances fall magnificently, headlong into caricature, most notably Emery, who is so disgustingly whiny and unlikable that he calls to mind Franklin, the vile, wheelchair-bound younger brother of Sally in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". When Emery's neurotically overprotective mother Kay (Laura Kenny) shows up and begins gnawing at the scenery, the whole thing threatens to degenerate into cartoonishness...but the cast manages to pull it out and and give the viewer the genuinely creepy impression that the relationship between Emery and his mother is the unhealthiest thing in the house at that moment--given the stuff going on in Rose Red, that's saying something.
One central performance left me unsatisfied: Kimberly J. Brown, as the autistic psychic Annie, relies pretty heavily on theatrically portentous looks and the constant ghostly background noise of Annie's favorite song, "Theme from A Summer Place". There's no Rain Man virtuosity at work here, just a lot of dull staring off into the distance. At the end of the series, when Annie begins to speak, her laughably fake stammer fails utterly to convey the wonder of a non-verbal autistic person talking for the first time. You get the feeling she is not so much autistic as just backward and bratty. Melanie Lynsky's Rachel manages to be believably terrified of, and protective over, Annie--but Annie and Rachel's mother and father, who show up briefly, are so ham-handed in their effort to be BAD PEOPLE that they might have stepped straight out of an After-School Special about abusive parents.
Several reviewers have mentioned that the end of the movie, when all of the ghosts in the house close in on Dr. Reardon to make her a permanent resident of Rose Red, left them cold. I have to disagree. Dr. Reardon is cheerfully unlikable from the very beginning, with a toothy smile that never quite reaches her eyes and the shifty instincts of a nutria rat. I had no trouble believing that her increasingly manic efforts to control the people, the experiment, and ultimately Rose Red itself came from her own personality. She was not infected by the house; the house recognized her as a kindred spirit. The house knew she was awful and set her up for a brutal finish. The ghosts who take her down include Nick, Cathy, and Vic--all of whom died because she refused to listen to reason about how dangerous the house really was. The very last scene, where ghost-Joyce gazes smugly out the attic window, is both totally predictable, and totally eerie and unsettling in the best possible way.
Yes, the movie is derivative, but it has some terribly effective moments. Ultimately it's satisfying and rich in the guilty way of eating something delicious that you know is not good for you.
