Ring Around the Rosie (2006)

Ring Around the Rosie is a supernatural thriller about a woman (Gina Philips Jeepers Creepers) who travels to the family estate and finds herself condemned to a house with buried secrets from the past terrorizing and haunting her present. When Karen Baldwin's ailing grandmother makes a final request ' for Karen to clean out the family's mountain estate and liquidate its assets which she would be allowed to keep ' she and her boyfriend Jeff drive out to the family's old sprawling run-down mansion where Karen quickly meets Pierce (Tom Sizemore Heat Black Hawk Down) who takes care of the horses in the stables - he's dark mysterious strong and commanding.System Requirements:Run Time: 87 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLERS UPC: 043396137882 Manufacturer No: 13788 Product Description

To Grandmother's House We Go...

I really like Tom Sizemore. I even liked him in THE RELIC, an otherwise putrid affair. I loved Gina Philips in JEEPERS CREEPERS, and yes, she's a hottie. My main problem w/ RING AROUND THE ROSIE is that it takes too long to get going and to get to the point. This would have made a fantastic episode of TWILIGHT ZONE / NIGHT GALLERY / ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS etc., w/ about 40 minutes shaved off. The story is interesting enough- girl plagued by ghostly / psychological / evil hauntings. It just needs a big trim. As it stands, it's not terrible / unwatchable, it's just bloated. After seeing it once, I watched it again, fast-forwarding through the parts I knew to be superfluous, and found it far more enjoyable. I recommend this technique... September 25, 2008

surprisingly entertaining!

I READ OTHER REVIEWS ON THIS FILM AND EXPECTED THE MOVIE THAT I HAD RENTED TO BE LOUSY. WHAT A SURPRISE! IT HAD GREAT SUSPENSE AND THE SETTING WAS BRILLANT. I ALSO THOUGHT THE ACTING WAS SUPERB. THE MAIN ACTRESS AND THE HAUNTINGS MADE ME BELIEVE WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO HER.I WOULD SAY RENT THIS AND LET YOUR IMAGINATION GO WITH IT! September 16, 2008

Tries, fails.

Ring Around the Rosie (Rubi Zack, 2006)

Here's a movie that really looks like it's going somewhere, then it cops out. It's not as disappointing as Les Revenants, because it never gets anywhere near that good, but it does look like it has at least a little potential-- a decent cast, some great scenery, character interaction that really does have a creepy feel to it, and then all the sudden, bam. You're stuck in the hell that is the Hollywood cliché.

The story: Karen Baldwin (Jeepers Creepers' Gina Philips) inherits her grandparents' summer home, with express deathbed instructions from her grandmother to clean it up and sell it. She and her boyfriend Jeff (Randall Batinkoff, Dead Man's Curve) drive out to do the job, then they realize that it's going to take a lot more time than they thought. Jeff heads back to his job in the city, leaving Karen to do the job, assisted by Pierce (Paparazzi's Tom Sizemore), the caretaker. Karen is surprised by the arrival of her sister Wendy (D.E.B.S.' Jenny Mollen), and before long, the two of them are spending a lot more time reminiscing than actually getting anything done. Karen, however, is quite unhappy with the attention Pierce is paying Wendy, and Wendy's flirtatious attitude towards it.

The biggest problem with the movie is that you can see the ending coming no more than five minutes in. The second-biggest is that the script-- which it seems to have taken four people to write, according to IMDB-- never even attempts to give you any red herrings or the like; it's a mystery/thriller where there's no mystery and very few thrills. I wouldn't call it (as some IMDB pundits have) the worst movie ever-- I'd rather sit through this for a week straight, on infinite repeat, than every have to watch five minutes of Dances with Wolves ever again-- but there's absolutely nothing about it to recommend. The acting is competent, but rarely rises above that (and when it does, it's usually Tom Sizemore's fault); the same can be said of the direction, without anything after the "but". The pacing is awful, the cinematography pedestrian. Even the sound doesn't stand out. It's a perfectly bland film. But at least it achieved perfection in one respect. **

July 18, 2008

A real turd! Not horror, just a boring mess.

I really liked Gina Philips in JEEPERS CREEPERS, and I love horror films, so I was looking forward to RING AROUND THE ROSIE -- but this film is no JEEPERS CREEPERS.

Instead, in terms of both film genre and quality, RING AROUND THE ROSIE is a lot like the abysmally opaque, boring, and confused SILENCE BECOMES YOU.

RING AROUND THE ROSIE is no horror film. I suppose it's meant to be a "suspense" film, but there's no suspense here. Instead, Gina Philips spends much time wandering about an old house that she'd inherited, "seeing things." Flashbacks, or fantasies, or dreams, or ghosts, or maybe she's going insane, or ... well, she'd spent summers in the house as a child, so there are lots of "memories."

I guess we're supposed to be impressed with all these possibilities and filled with suspense as we wonder, gee, who knows what's going on? But I wasn't filled with suspense. I was bored.

There's also an "erotic subtext." An ominous caretaker who has the hots for Philips. When the caretaker makes his move on Philip's sister, there's even some cliched cross-cutting with scenes of unruly horses. Ooooooo! -- what fierce passions lie just beneath these characters' cool exteriors!

Boooring!

Okay, here's a spoiler warning (although not really, because I saw it coming)...

In the end we discover that ... it was all a dream!

You want more proof this film is bad? It's an hour and 23 minutes (not including credits) -- but there are FIVE credited screenwriters. No wonder the script is so confused. Flashbacks, fantasies, dreams, ghosts ... it's real, it's not real ... these writers were all writing a different script.

Poor Gina Philips. She wanders about this film, looking confused most of the time. No wonder. Not only is her character confused, but this poor actress was still trying to figure out what this script was about as she was filming it. January 2, 2008

Worst movie I've seen in a long time.

RING AROUND THE ROSIES is a pocket full of poop. Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to remake 1950's schlock flick "The Screaming Skull" without the skull, but with all the screaming. And Gina Philips screams a lot, often for no particular discernible reason, leaving us to try to figure out if SHE'S what we're supposed to be frightened of. I was scared of her. I pity her character's husband, who splits early in the film, leaving her looked after by the gardener, who is played by a life-sized but not quite life-like Tom Sizemore marionette.

Characters say very flat, obvious things to each other, and are always met with "Really?" as a response. Count the number of times this happens. It will bother you. It may be the shabbiest script ever written.

Also, Gina Philips is a special brand of over actor. You won't believe the bizarre physical choices she makes in bringing her character to life. For example, she's walking down the stairs with a stack of papers and books, only to find her friend at the bottom of the stairs to greet her. She literally drops 35 lbs of books and debris all over herself in surprise! But it's no big deal. The scene just carries on.

Anyhow, long story short, Gina Philips has nightmares all the time, though I'm not sure why, and Tom Sizemore may or may not be a bad guy. All of this happens on a ranch with horses, and it doesn't end soon enough. If you like lots of quick cut editing of nothing during which a woman screams, see this movie by all means. September 10, 2007

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