Rose Red

At its heart, the movie is a haunted house flick in the vein of recent films like House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts, albeit one that takes a long time to get going, a long time to build up a story, and a long time to get over with. But they had a lot of commercials to sell, so who can fault them, huh?

The house in Rose Red has the typically creepy history to draw an investigator of psychic phenomena (Nancy Travis) plus a crew of experts. And of course, what starts as a sleepy, boring visit, soon turns gruesome and quickly generates a body count. Why is the house feeding off these people's "energy"? Well, that's never really answered -- unless "to make a long mini-series" is answer enough for you.

The special effects are okay for a TV movie, but the cheese in the script is thicker than my mother's chile con queso. Would psychics really use a "people proximity detector" -- with bold LED readout ("21... 22... 23") -- to count ghosts? And the whole premise is rather silly: If Travis is looking for proof of psychic phenomenon, why doesn't she just show off the little autistic girl (Kimberly J. Brown) she has in tow, who openly makes things levitate and can make music play out of a flower?

That's science for ya!

The civilian army vs. the house.