The Stephen King Horror Series Netflix Needs To Reboot

Rose Red follows a team of psychics that have been assembled by Dr. Joyce Reardon (Nancy Travis) to explore a sprawling Seattle mansion that bears the show’s namesake. Nearly two dozen people have died or vanished without a trace over the home’s century-long history, but is thought by experts to now be a “dead cell” and incapable of producing any phenomenon.

But what Dr. Reardon hasn’t told her team of psychics is that one of the members holds the key to waking the house up, giving the professor the means to record the supernatural and finally give credence to her life’s work.

Rose Red weaves in and out of the various characters on screen, showcasing their individual psychic abilities along with glimpses of the creepy mansion’s morbid history. The home was built by oil magnate John Rimbauer as a wedding gift to his wife Ellen. After several years of marriage to a cheating jerk like John, Ellen found herself always in the company of one of her servants Sukeena who encouraged her to attend a seance.

The seance left Ellen with the mission to keep building onto Rose Red, lest she die. But as the house got bigger, it began to take on a life of its own. And in order for it to maintain itself as a life-like entity, the house began to consume human victims by way of freak accidents, apparent suicides, or by swallowing them whole and leaving no trace of them behind.

Stephen King was inspired by both history and horror fiction when he took to penning the screenplay for Rose Red. Borrowing a bit from the 1959 Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House, King weaved in the plot line of psychics gathering at a reputedly possessed house for the purpose of recording supernatural phenomenon. King’s screenplay also got plenty of inspiration from a house that many consider one of the most haunted homes in the U.S.

The Winchester Mansion in San Jose, CA began as a sizable farmhouse and wound up a residential monstrosity with hundreds of rooms, passageways, and staircases that all combine into a building that is more a labyrinth of a structure than a home. Like Rose Red‘s Ellen Rimbauer, the Winchester matriarch had construction occurring around the clock on her home. By the time she died in 1922, it ended an estimated 20 years of building that never ceased.

Combining these inspirations, King was able to pound out a screenplay that was riveting, sometimes funny, and always kept audiences on the edge of their seats. The production lacked the acting power of a theatrical release and certainly has dated special effects; two negative attributes that a new version could easily rectify.

But even with the dated special effects and subpar acting, Stephen King’s haunted house mini-series deserves praise for the high-level jump scares, horrifying imagery, and interesting storyline. Rose Red also gives audiences a bit of what they love to see the most when they tune into these sorts of productions, namely the characters they despise the most getting their comeuppance in the grisliest of ways.

The mini-series is also successful in generating semi-complicated back stories for nearly every character involved and weaving their strengths, weaknesses, and fears into the overall story arc.

With so much character development for Rose Red, a theatrical reboot would be forced to condense much of the back stories. That’s no easy task, considering that King wasted not a moment of screen time with any of this three-episode endeavor, needing every bit of time available to build not only the intense and involved plot line for his creation, but also in ensuring that every character was delivered to audiences as full and bright as possible.

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But the right screenwriter/director combination would make a new version of Rose Red a horror film worth remembering. Modern special effects, A-list stars, and a score with just the right level of off-screen intensity would work together to give fans a terrifying ride that combines the best of body horror with psychological chills.

A Rose Red reboot could far surpass the merits of the 2002 version if the right minds were brought into the production. In the meantime, you can stream the mini-series on Hulu.