ABC | Release Date: January 27, 2002
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
47
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 21 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
9
Negative:
8
58
Dallas Morning NewsEd BarkMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: It's not enough to justify a six-hour investment, but the climactic special effects at least are first-rate and fun to watch. "Rose Red" otherwise is just too hilarious at times. Not entirely horrid, it's way short on horror. For shame, Stephen King. Larry King is sometimes scarier than this. [27 Jan 2002]
58
Boston GlobeJim SullivanMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: Sure, there are some bona fide jolts and creepy moments but overall in "Rose Red" there's a small smattering of surprise. [25 Jan 2002]
50
Los Angeles Daily NewsRob LowmanMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: But the payoff is too long in coming. Much of the third night involves - what else? - wandering around the ever-growing mansion. You get the feeling the characters are biding their time between commercials. King should have been advised to cut the miniseries by a night. Instead, watching "Rose Red" is like hanging out in a Halloween haunted house too long. After a while, you know somebody - or something - is going to pop out to try and scare you. By then, though, you've reached your fright limit and you're just too numb to jump. [27 Jan 2002, p.L7]
50
Boston HeraldLiz MatsonMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: Two nights might have worked better for this series, but if noises at night make you jump, "Stephen King's Rose Red" will give you a decent dose of the heebie-jeebies. [27 Jan 2002]
50
Houston ChronicleAnn HodgesMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: A six-hour haunted house tale that tugs out every tired trick in the Boo! book, trying to scare you silly. Don't say we didn't warn you, if you're silly enough to watch all that. [27 Jan 2002]
50
Detroit Free PressMike DuffyMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: Plays like a motley medley of the grand exalted ghost buster's greatest hits. It's a fright night festival of tepid chills and only moderate thrills, a haunted house miniseries that drags on for three nights. [27 Jan 2002, p.1F]
30
Cleveland Plain DealerMark DawidziakMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: The truly scary thing about Stephen King's Rose Red is its running time. Spectral chains aren't the only things dragging in this rambling haunted-house miniseries from the horrormeister, whose best-written best sellers move at a frighteningly crisp pace. There are times when "Rose Red" seems to hardly move at all. With its sluggish six hours stretched over three nights, the ABC miniseries is a case of way too little story occupying way too much prime-time space. [26 Jan 2002, p.E1]
25
The Detroit NewsTom LongMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: Stephen King should get out more. This latest miniseries offering from the too prolific schlock horrormeister may be the week's big TV event, running Sunday, Monday and Thursday, but it plays like a greatest hits collection: Stephen's Best Spooks . Except, like so many such collections, once you get all the songs next to one another, you realize they sound alarmingly similar. [26 Jan 2002]
25
USA TodayRobert BiancoMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: And six hours later, it's over -- though like most King TV projects, Rose Red doesn't so much end as run out of time. Run the other way. [25 Jan 2002]
25
New York Daily NewsDavid BianculliMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: Be bored. Be very bored....Stephen King's Rose Red, the new six-hour ABC miniseries written by King, is a haunted-house story that's told so slowly, it's almost inert. [24 Jan 2002]
20
Orlando SentinelHal BoedekerMay 12, 2021
Season 1 Review: Legend has it that 23 people disappeared at Rose Red. On the strength of King's name, millions more are bound to get lost there. So a warning: It's a long, punishing program that will leave you stupefied in Seattle. [27 Jan 2002, p.4]