Rose Red

For the rest of us who aren't above settling in for a well-wrought ghost story, who allow ourselves the guilty pleasure of a roiling melodrama, Stephen King's 'Rose Red' is inconsequential fun.

It won't add snap to anyone's synapses. It's a dumbly, numbly entertaining pastiche about a bad house.

This one may be only for Stephen King’s most fanatical followers.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

"Rose Red delivers a better story than his last opus (1999's "Storm of the Century") with better developed characters, but at the end I still felt like I'd wasted a lot of time. What's the point in setting up an intriguing, intricate backstory without offering some answers?

The bad news is that in true King fashion the mini series is about three hours longer than it needs to be. Somebody throw King to a newspaper editor. They decapitate copy at will! (Now that’s real horror.)

The same tech crew that brought viewers the highly effective "Storm of the Century" forgot to include the mojo this time around...A far cry from the kind of scarefest his fans have come to expect.

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]

King’s characters inspire indifference—except for the ones who are actively annoying—so you’re unlikely to care that some of the ghostbusters wind up dead. The author has a cheeky cameo in part 2 as a pizza delivery man, but instead of wasting his time acting he should have thought up a satisfying ending. After six hours of Rose Red, it’s truly scary to contemplate that the story may not be over. Bottom Line: Bring on the wrecking ball.

As unoriginal as haunted house stories get, Stephen King’s Rose Red is his “Carrie” and “The Shining” meets “Ghostbusters,” “Night of the Living Dead” and the Psychic Hotline. Written by the prolific King, this overwrought, overacted three-parter on ABC is campy, not scary or even stomach-turning.

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]

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]

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]

"Rose Red" is a rambling wreck of a film, chopped into a three-night miniseries -- six total hours, if you include the commercials, airing Sunday, Monday and Thursday -- for no discernible reason other than that King is apparently being paid by the hour. In fairness, "Rose Red" is the first major project King tackled after being seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver in 1999. But while that may be a good excuse for King's less-than-great screenplay, is there no one at ABC with the authority to ask for a second or third draft?