It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Rose Red has been one of my favorite works in the horror/mystery genre for a long time. A group of people with psychic abilities, hired and led by a parapsychology professor, set out to investigate the abandoned historical mansion of Rose Red, but things begin to take a dangerous turn. Seems like an overplayed scenario, right? Certainly not! For a start, the film is incredibly atmospheric, a true masterpiece in the field of psychological horror. Most importantly, as is usually the case with the works of Stephen King, the characters are far from perfect and flawless. They carry their own personalities, history and problems that actually make them human. In this mini series mainly focused on the paranormal, you will surely recognize timeless people and issues. Not for a single minute of the 4-hour long plot will you feel tired, as all the film's details gradually build up an amazing story. Strongly recommended to all fans of the genre who haven't yet come across it.

This movie was fairly entertaining for want of anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon, but as everything by Stephen King it had no depth - and it is not one of his best works either.Firstly, it was much too long. You cannot stretch out a haunted house movie for over four hours, because the viewers get used to the scary things in it. For instance, the two old female inhabitants who have stayed on in the house as ghosts, look really creepy the first and second time you see them. But the third or fourth time, you have become "friends" with them..! And then there became too many dead people who turned into ghosts, to be shocking or even interesting anymore...IF you want to write a whole miniseries about a haunted house, I think there must be some other strong storyline as well, apart from the haunting. For instance a treasure hunt or a love story.Secondly, the movie is so obviously a plagiarism of "The Haunting" from 1963, and also the remake from 1999. The similarities simply are too many for them to be coincidences.Thirdly, and worst, was the high piano music and/or "creepy sounds" almost throughout the whole movie. It was so loud, that it was very difficult to hear what the actors were saying - I had to try to read their lips! But I wonder if this mistake can really have been possible in the original - it seems incredible! Maybe someone has manipulated my copy of it (I downloaded it from the internet).Fourthly, it did not have any really good scares. Not the kind that make you jump, when you suddenly see something horrible. Many times the music etc. seemed to build up to this kind of scare - but one was always disappointed by what one really saw. As so often with Stephen King, the scares were more unpleasant and gory than those "pure and high" scares in old Gothic ghost stories - that I think are the ideal in horror..!I will remember two scenes from this movie though, because they were very funny. Firstly, the "nerd" who (in the beginning) was quite indifferent to the powers who tried to scare him off, and just told them "try doing that to someone who isn't broke". (Because he needed the money he would get for taking part too much to care about anything else.) And secondly the very last pictures, when Joyce, the career-hungry, female researcher who had led them all into the mess and then died in the house herself in the end, was herself one of the ghosts in the haunted house - and obviously had resigned to her fate. Of some reason I thought this very funny - maybe because I have known some ruthless career women just like her..!

There is nothing new here.We have all seen this before in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist A team of psychics plan to investigate a mansion known as Rose Red of former owner Ellen Rimbauer and try to uncover the mysterious deaths and disappearances which occurred there.The CGI special effects are good. But the plot and poor scripting make the film a bore for a 4 hour sitting. There is no suspense at all.The only good actor involved is Julian Sands (of Warlock fame). The other actors performance is mediocre at best.A director similar in stature to Kubrick or Hitchcock could have made this a better film.Better watch 1408 directed by Mikael Håfström than this film.

At his best, Stephen King has good ideas and writes excruciatingly bad prose. And even the good ideas vanish in the translation to the screen. In my experience, there are only two good movies made from King's books--Christine and The Dead Zone (The Shining is Kubrick's biggest disappointment.) Rose Red is the worst haunted house film I have ever seen, and in the top 1% of worst movies I have ever seen. Gregory, the infallible movie cat, who normally responds to bad films with a disdainful sniff and a malodorous trip to the litter box, nearly made the same comment in from of the television about 10 minutes into the second segment.Where oh where can we start? Let's start with the special effects, if only to dismiss them. Pretty as they are, they dress up a pig. And as we all should know, you can dress up a big, put lipstick on her, and call her Monique--but she is still a pig. No bad film was ever made good with special effects--and this turkey is a prime example.How about the cast? On the whole pretty good, with a couple of veterans like Judith Ivey and Julian Sands, both of whom are capable of enlivening a film. Not here.And now, the plot. Oh, the plot. What a dreadful mess. First of all, it's a mishmash of elements from far better work. The house that's alive and malignant? And the experiment with psychics? Look no further than the best of all haunted house movies, the original version of The Haunting (not the remake!). Even King used it before in The Shining. The child medium? Firestarter, and any of a dozen different films and movies. And The Haunting did more in two hours than this in well over four.And why? To begin with, everything, including the kitchen sink and all the the plumbing, has been tossed in, with decidedly ill effect. We have academic politics. We have a mad scientist in Nancy Travis's character, who is so annoying that it's a wonder that the rest of the investigators didn't roll her up in a carpet and jump up and down, up and down, crushing her like Nero did Poppea. For heaven's sake, we even have a nerd with a neurotic smothering mother--a veritable field day for Freud.And what is worse--far far worse--is that the whole preposterous farrago makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. Why does writing "Open the doors" 100 times open the doors? If the house is the evil entity, why does its influence extend far the house. And, for that matter, given the aerial shots of the house in the middle of downtown Seattle, where the devil is all the open space in which characters keep getting lost? And we do not get to see the house blown up at the end? A terrible cheat-perhaps the SFX budget ran out. And, to cap it all, the dialogue is written--and delivered (with a few exceptions) in a fever pitch of hysteria that heightens the overall sense of--well, confusion is perhaps the kindest word for it.Four hours on DVD, six on television with breaks. For heaven's sake, save yourself time and brain cells. Rent a good film like the original version of The Haunting or The Uninvited (Ruth Hussy, Ray Milland.) Why anyone watches this festering heap of poo is beyond me.