Stephen King's Rose Red

Imagine, if you will, that you have in your home a small office. It is a pleasant enough office. Its shelves are covered in sentimental knicknacks and sag with books. Your desk is cluttered, but you know where everything is. You keep a small plant on the windowsill that you hope does not die. And you keep a large cardboard box full of slips of paper, next to a jar of dice.

Try this experiment at home. Rip a few sheets of paper into strips. On the strips, write these words, and divide the strips into columns as shown:

Now draw a slip of paper at random from each of the three columns, and plug the results into the following sentence, drawing a new slip each time a column number appears again:

“A group of [1] [2] (or perhaps a single representative of same) does something incredibly stupid and runs afoul of a(n) [1] [2] in a relatively isolated area in [3], and deaths result ([4] the Apocalypse).”

Congratulations: You are now Stephen King.

Don’t believe me? Try it. Some results will be ludicrous, but most of them will sound familiar:

“A group of innocent New Englanders (or perhaps a single representative of same) does something incredibly stupid and runs afoul of a Mysterious Representative of Satan (before the Apocalypse).” Now come up with a catchy and unprofound slogan — something like, “Give me what I want and I’ll go away,” and you’ve got Storm of the Century.

Or how about:

“A group of young adults (or perhaps a single representative of same) does something incredibly stupid and runs afoul of an evil random object in a relatively isolated area in Somewhere Else, and deaths result (before the Apocalypse).”

Now glance out the window and notice your own car in the driveway, supplying the random object. Congratulations: today you’ll write Christine.

Or perhaps:

“A group of noble adults (or perhaps a single representative of same) does something incredibly stupid and runs afoul of a mysterious representative of Satan in a relatively isolated area in somewhere else, and deaths result (after the Apocalypse).”

Hey, settle in for the weekend — you’re going to write The Stand. Step it up, because the editor needs it Monday.

Keep going; you’ll be amazed at the number of plausible hits you get, when you apply a little imagination.

The subject of this review, however, is the miniseries Rose Red, which no doubt started as the sentence, “A group of stupid psychics (or perhaps a single representative of same) does something incredibly stupid and runs afoul of a(n) evil Graveyard, Haunted House, or Cornfield in a relatively isolated area in Somewhere Else, and deaths result (before the Apocalypse).” Pick the Haunted House option, and you’re on you’re way to writing the miniseries yourself.

Nancy Travis plays Joyce Reardon, a college professor and alleged scientist who hunts ghosts when she’s not smearing her own blood on other members of the [understandably] creeped-out faculty. Joyce seeks to crack the nut of what she calls the “Great White Whale” of parapsychology: Rose Red, a sprawling mansion on a hill overlooking some city, somewhere, that I think is Seattle.

The mansion is haunted, you see, and during the course of its existence has claimed the lives of several men. More than a dozen women have disappeared while visiting it. The natural reaction of Horror Movie Denizens is, of course, to arrange tours to the Creepy Haunted House that Kills People, because — as we all know — people in horror movies are profoundly stupid. Only people in horror movies bury multiple loved ones in an evil Indian burial ground, each time expecting the latest buried loved one not to come back homicidal and evil like all the previous ones. Only people in horror movies ask themselves, “Where do we go on vacation this summer? Why not that place where all those people died last summer, and the summer before that?” Only people in horror movies say to themselves, “There’s a serial killer somewhere in the house — let’s go find him and ask him what his problem is.” And only people in a horror movie would say to themselves, “Let’s go see if we can’t wake up the Creepy Haunted House that Kills People, since it hasn’t killed anyone in a while.”

That’s the premise of Joyce’s investigation, you see. It seems the repeated deaths and vanishings among members of tour groups to Rose Red prompted the tours to be canceled, and the house has since “died” without new people to feed its gleefully murderous needs. So Joyce assembles a group of psychics — all legitimate and gifted, with nary a fake spoon-bender among them — in the hopes of annoying the house until it wakes up to kill them all. She has videotape and a bunch of surplus equipment props from Ghostbusters.

Where Stephen King really shines is with regard to character development. There are no two-dimensional characters for Mr. King, no sir. Why, there’s the suave and handsome psychic with the English accent, Nick (played by Julian Sands of the b-movie classic Warlock). There’s the annoying man-child psychic whose relationship with his controlling mother is extremely unhealthy, Emery. There’s the Christian psychic who believes God will take care of her no matter what danger she faces, Cathy. There’s the attractive young female psychic, Pam. There’s the creepy young girl psychic who doesn’t talk to anyone, Annie. And there’s Annie’s caretaker sister, “Sister.” (“I am so tired, King thought to himself that day, “I can’t even think of a name for the sister. Damn it. Maybe I should just write ‘Sister’ in the script and come back to it later.”) And there’s the old man psychic with the bad heart, Victor. Of course there’s also the guy who isn’t psychic, Steven Rimbauer, a descendant of the people who built the Creepy Haunted House. He’s sleeping with Joyce.

As these incredibly complex characters enter the Creepy Haunted House that kills people, savvy horror movie watchers start ranking them according to the Red Shirt Dead Meat index, a table of probabilities inspired by the average shelf life of a Star Trek Security officer. Probability that creepy young girl who seldom talks will survive the movie? 75%, versus a 25% chance that she’ll vanish or merge with a spirit and disappear, or something. Probability that attractive young female psychic will survive the movie? Negligible. Probability that any Handsome Man with an Accent will die during the course of a Stephen King miniseries? Close to 100%, though he’ll get to go out heroically. Probability that the guy who isn’t psychic will turn out to be psychic after all? 75%. Probability that the old guy with the bad heart will have a heart attack? 100%. His survival chances? 50%.

Oh, I almost forgot: Probability that the evil Professor Miller (played by David Dukes), who hates Joyce and dislikes her habit of smearing blood on him, will show up at the house to pursue his campaign to oust her from the college faculty and be killed after doing so? 100%.

As we watch the characters, we also watch their surroundings. The house’s hallways are long and dark and creepy. Probability that people will become lost and disoriented as the house changes around them? Again, 100%. Probability that the suit of armor in the living room will come to life and try to kill someone? 200%, my friend, because the only reason for a suit of armor in a haunted house is to make it come to life and try to chop someone in half with that halberd thing with which all Haunted House Suits of Armor come equipped.

King is actually pretty good at building tension and creeping you out, as long your imagination fills in the details. When the attractive young female psychic disappears, you’re not terribly surprised. When she reappears, you’re pretty sure she’s some sort of apparition.

When Emery — you remember, the irritating guy with mom-related issues? — loses a few fingers as a haunted door slams shut on his hand, you’re a little freaked out. That is, until you start to wonder if he was named “Emery” because King knew he was going to lop off a few of the poor guy’s digits.

Things only get worse from there. The creepy little girl, Annie, is the focus for a lot of very strange things, because Stephen King hates all children everywhere and believes them to be the focus for all that is creepy and strange in the world. Emery’s mom shows up, quickly goes insane (which is actually an improvement), and is trussed up by Nick and Cathy, who very graciously leave her at the mercy of the House that Kills people. “Don’t worry, tied-up crazy lady; you’ll be fine, all helpless on the kitchen floor here.”

If the Haunted House has one good feature, it is that it generates food spontaneously. The kitchen has grub in it, though I don’t know how keen I would be to eat food generated by ghosts, or whatever they are. Anyway, the movie devolves into a confused mess of people hallucinating, running down ever-growing hallways, and freaking out. Joyce goes from Normal to So Obsessed To Complete Her Psychic Mission That She Doesn’t Care Who Dies in roughly three seconds, which for Stephen King constitutes a dynamic, developed character.

Now, to conclude your novel, you know, just as Stephen King knows, that you must do something different — something that sets your latest story apart from your other three hundred billion stories. So you pick an ending — at random from Columns 1 and 2. Thus, when you ask yourself, “How should Rose Red end?” the answer is, “It was all done by a [1][2] or many of the same.”

In this case, the answer is “It was all done by a Creepy Zombie or many of the same.” And that’s what the Horrible Insidious Secret behind Rose Read really is: Ellen Rimbauer (who built the mansion originally, full of bitter rage over her husband’s philandering) and her African slave-maid Zucchini (okay, the maid’s real name was “Sukeena,” but I spent the whole miniseries thinking it really was “Zucchini”) are horrible Zombie creatures who lurk around the house trying to steal people to help them expand it. In that way it’s kind of an Evil Habitat for Humanity, complete with Jimmy Carter. Oh, wait, that wasn’t Jimmy Carter, it was another zombie. Okay, I can’t be sure either way.

Finished! Now call your Agent, and tell him to give you what you want or you’ll go away. He’ll chuckle politely, he’ll cut you a check, and you’ll laugh all the way to bank.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 20th, 2002 at 09:20 and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.