garyvines-01290

The premise of this movie is intriguing, a rouge college professor (Nancy Travis) interested in paranormal, collects a group of people with proven paranormal/psychic abilities to awake a dormant house/spirit in the sprawling derelict mansion who is the name's sake of the film. The group that will do the awakening includes someone with Psychometry or the ability to obtain information about someone through touch, played by Emily Deschanel, an automatic writer played by Judith Ivey, someone who can see ghosts (Matt Ross), A mind reader (Julian Sands) a precog (Kevin Tighe) and an autistic girl with telekinesis, cytokinesis, telepathy and the ability to rain boulders down onto the place of her choosing. (Might not be a good idea to deny her ice cream if she asks for it...just saying'.) In addition to the physics there is the autistic girl's big sister and protector played by Melanie Lynskey and a relative of the former owner of the Manion Steve Rimbauer played by Matt Keeslar.

Story seemed interesting enough and there are enough actors and actresses that are today known as powerhouses so what went south for me?

The positives first: Great story idea. On paper if you read this story to yourself, it would likely have translated a lot better in your own mind which many Stephen King stories tend to do. This story (like many of King's works) needed to be edited down to a single storyline and it was getting there, but there were too many subplots for this to be coherent. The subplot of Emery and his mother, with Steve Rimbaour and the many ladies that were interested in him, the flashbacks helped but they could have been a whole prequel worth of information so that was distracting.

Fantastic setting. The Rose Red house could have been a bigger character in this movie if given the chance. Lots of creepy things to explore and it even wakes up at some point and begins to build itself. This however is never fleshed out completely for me and what should have been a creepy subplot just kind of fell flat.

The negatives. With so many heavy-hitting actors and actresses in this movie, there is no reason other than directing that they were so 2 dimensional and flat. Julian Sands delivered his lines like he was reading them directly from a queue-card and Navy Travis was overacting. Melani Lynskey seemed like she was acting on a stage and the little girl was supposed to come off as creepy but instead she came off like she was dumb. The Characters of Emery and his mother were terribly written and acted like they were told to ham it up beforehand. I've seen Matt Ross in other things, so I know he's a better actor than that, so I blame the director and the writing.

This movie didn't age well. Some of the scarier parts were done with what looked like life-like puppets that moved is a jerky way that wasn't scary at all. Make-up was fine but the puppets were so obviously puppets that it didn't age well. Some of the CGI was ok for its time but overall the special effects didn't age well at all.

Not to mention, the whole thing is whitewashed, with no minority characters of any kind and could also be labeled as ableist since the actress playing an autistic child wasn't on the spectrum. I mean, it's called acting though, not being but by today's standards there would be issues.

Should you watch this movie, if you're a Stephen king fan or a fan of any of the actors who appeared in this film, then yes. If you're expecting great acting and awe-inspiring special effects, then I would skip this one entirely.

Earth has passed into the tail of a comet that produces some sort of strange radiation that makes most of the machines and computers on earth sentient and destructive. Vehicles move under their own power and try and kill humans. Sodo machines shoot out their contents at a deadly speed and draw bridges bring themselves up, creating chaos. A small group of people become trapped in a diner while the large trucks, one of which has a daunting goblin's head attached to the front it, encircle the diner waiting for the humans to come out.

This was the premise of this coked-up, action/horror movie that makes absolutely no sense. It's part horror, part action, part science fiction yet none of it congeals into anything that makes any sense whatsoever. Then, I approached it as a comedy and watched it again and it came off a little better to me.

The stand outs of this movie: 1. It's so bad it's good, what's supposed to scare comes off hilarious and the dialog has such a generic tone to it, that it sounds like the movie is a spoof.

2. Emilio Estevez, because he's Emilio Estevez.

3. The sound track done by the legendary AC/DC.

4. That iconic Goblin headed truck.

Don't watch this expecting it to be scary, make any sense, develop characters or be serious in any way and you can get through it.

Oh, and by the way, its directed by Stephen King who wrote it. I am a big fan of his writing, but not so much the movies that get made as that his writing works best in your own imagination and something frequently gets lost in translation what it moves into other medium.

This movie is about a newly formed family from an existing family of a Father Max (played by Tom Payne from The Walking Dead...I wished he had a bigger part as that he's an Excellent actor) and his two daughters Alice (Pyper Braun) and Tylor (Tegen Burn). Max marries Jessica, (DeWanda Wise) how is a famous children's book artist and they move to Jessica's childhood home to start their family and be closer to Jessica's institutionalized Father. Upon arrival, Alice starts to hear a disembodied voice and eventually discovers a Teddy Bear, named Chauncy who she refers to as her imaginary friend. She indicates that Chauncy tells her things, is constantly hungry and has created a list of things for her to collect for him that seems a little off.

Of course, Jessica and Taylor don't hit it off in the stereotypical teen angst and "you're not my mother" attitude that is so frequently and predictably portrayed in movies like this that I could have told you that was going to happen from the start. Alice is a little "special" and her whole character sort of throws back to "Poltergeist' in that she seems to be the target of something from the other side wanting to reel her in.

Jessica is re-introduced to her childhood baby sitter Gloria (played by the stellar Betty Buckly, who you may remember as the nice teacher that befriended Carrie in the movie.... Carrie.) She seems to have some insight into Jessica's troubled past but doesn't share the information initially.

I was initially captured, but quickly got lost in the storyline which began to unravel midway through. I didn't really have an issue with the actors, they all did a pretty good job but even they started to de-rail toward the end. It's as if this movie couldn't quite realize itself or the writers had a great idea but couldn't carry it out. The movie echoes Poltergeist, Labyrinth, Hell raiser, A nightmare on Elm Street and maybe a few others I can't quite put my finger on right now. Those all are great inspiration but also are giants in their genre, so you'd better be able to compare, which this movie didn't, not by a long shot. The story started well but fizzled.

That being said, I could see, with some minor editing this movie being a good scary movie for children around the Halloween time frame, especially or 8-12 year olds, considering that something that a lot them may actually own a teddy bear. Other than that, this is not a movie I would recommend to anyone over the age of about 16.