Customer Reviews

Ring Around the Rosie

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Sigh....here we go again. ANOTHER supposed thriller that leaves everything to the viewer's discretion to determine what the heck we just wasted our money on. Gina Phillips stars as a young girl who inherits her grandparents' summer home, where obviously something spooky happened when Gina was a girl. She has a livein boyfriend, of course and her younger sister shows up, as does a mysterious handyman who plays some part in the mystery. The real mystery is why movies like these continue to get made. No payoff and what has happened by the end is never explained to its audience. Tom Sizemore mimics Rod Steiger in his performance and Randall Batinkoff as the boyfriend is wasted. No shocks..no thrills. No good!!!

Notice how ever single positive review was made on either April 5th or April 11th? And notice how this movie is the only one each of them have ever reviewed on amazon? Is that not vaguely suspicious? I guess the only way to sell a crappy movie is by posting fake reviews.

Ring Around the Rosie was/is a far better film then the reviewers here say it is. This is a creepy little film more in the vain of lets scare jessica to death. Unlike jessica though, this one has coped a real and underserved baging. For no other reason then the fact, it refusess to spoon feed the veiwer, which has now become the norm with the teeny horror market, which this doese not belong too. I found this film to be a throw back to the older style horror thriller, when people did not mind using their brains to follow a film. the reviewer who said if this was made ten years ago, it would have been cheered, rather then jeered, is spot on. Anyway if your the sort of person who likes moody,creepy films with more adult story lines, and dont mind having to use a brain cell or two, give this a go. more like it need to be made, or teeny horror will take over, and thats truelly scarry

"Ring Around the Rosie" stars Gina Philips ("Jeepers Creepers") and Tom Sizemore ("Saving Private Ryan"). I was interested in their names, but sadly the film is terribly boring, even though it runs less than 90 minutes.

Gina Philips plays Karen, a young business woman who inherits a house in a remote place in the countryside, which might or might not be haunted. Near the house lives a caretaker played by Tom Sizemore, who might or might not be possessed by something evil. The premise is all too familiar, used recently in such films as "The Amityville Horror," and with the right direction the film would be thrilling.

But you will soon realize that there in no thrills of any kind, not even a surprise by sudden big sound, in "Ring Around the Rosie" which introduces many recycled bits of images seen in other thrillers - from rudimentary tricks like shadows moving behind the door, a weird reflection in the mirror, strange noise in the midnight or unreliable neighbor staring at the protagonist, to the heroine tormented by nightmares and her buried memories of the past.

The film has also Karen's amiable boyfriend (Randall Batinkoff) and her lovely younger sister (Jenny Mollen). The former leaves the house while Karen stays to clean up the house; the latter arrives there and what Karen sees and hears start to get stranger. Considering the nature of the conclusion and suggested history of Karen's childhood (which I cannot disclose here), there could be some psychological explanations about the strange events that terrorize Karen, as in such thrillers as `The Others." That's what I thought while trying not to sleep, but no matter how I try, I cannot find one in this disjointed story that is confusing and illogical. If you see a character falling from the window and another character catches her in his arms in a cartoon-like way, you realize this is not a very good psychological thriller.

Or maybe I am thinking too much. Probably this is another badly written horror film you might find in your rental video shop, borrow it and regret it later. Whatever it is, I was bored, and that I can say pretty confidently.

Let me just start by saying that I am very open to different styles of films and different approaches. I am also a very big fan of the genres of horror or suspence. Having said that, this film basically took the approach of shooting several incoherent scenes(since when is it terrifying to just shake the camera around and use lame camecorder type effects to create terror)of it's protagonist walking around or laying in bed. Trust me when I say that those who liked this film must have been drunk, and basically chalked up the shotty story to their inebriation(sorry folks no one understands this film, even sober)or simply trying to rectify to themselves their having wasted money and time on this movie.

I won't go into what it's about too much as you can read the other reviews on that. Let me say that this film fails in all of the following areas.

Suspense-there isn't much suspense over the initial 45 minutes of the protagonist simply acting weird, thinking weird things, or dreaming of weird things. So what?

Story-Did these guys write this story in seperate parts, throw them together and kill their editor? This had to be the most inchorent pile of garbage every considered a story to be on a movie screen, or tv screen for that matter. I actually looked at my watch several times and thought, "they don't have much time left to get to some point or go somewhere with this film."

Acting-it was overdone and humurous(when it wasn't supposed to be).

Direction-convinced there was no director.

basically over and over during the film, my wife and I kept saying, "this is really stupid." I think we finished the film as a badge of honor of sorts. We made it into a funny psuedo myster science theater-look at this pile of garbage type event.

I've only seen maybe one or two other films in MY LIFE that were this bad.

I plead with the director, just because you got a camcorder for christmas doesn't make you a movie maker. Not a legit one.

To wrap this up, the ending of the film was such a freaking predictable letdown, that I laughed out loud, then thought back to all of the ridiculous scenes that had nothing to do with it.

Actually this film did make me laugh. So it got a star for that.

Should've known better though. Any film which has it's packaging try to explain itself so much on the back of the box probably has it's reasons for doing so...BECAUSE THE FILM WILL MAKE NO SENSE OTHERWISE.

I'm an avid Horror movie goer. My taste in horror flicks may not be the best, I'll admit I am a little picky, but they still have to be worth watching. This movie has no redeeming qualities to it whatsoever. I watched it with a group of people and by the first five minutes none of us knew what was going on, yet the ending was easily predictable. It was one of the worst horror flicks I've ever seen. I wouldn't recommend even renting it.

An hour into Ring Around the Rosie, I was wondering why in the name of H.P. Lovecraft so many reviewers trashed this movie. It was genuinely creepy, suspenseful, disturbing in an I-haven't-figured-it-out-yet-but-I-have-some-ideas kind of way, and building up to something quite possibly momentous. Very soon thereafter, though, the story suddenly became way too disjointed and tumbled into several what-the-heck-just-happened moments. That most definitely is a problem, and I can see how some viewers would begin to turn on the film at that point. I can also see how the ending leaves some viewers feeling as if the movie just gave them the finger. Still, speaking as a horror veteran who has seen it all (or at least most of it), I think Ring Around the Rosie rises to the occasion much more often than it falls into clichés. If this would have been released ten years ago, it would certainly have generated more cheers than jeers.

We horror fans are incredibly fortunate to have Gina Philips working in our genre; I would watch this gorgeous woman in anything at all, and I'm so thankful I don't have to suffer through sugary romances or chick flicks to bathe in her beauty. I think she's even sexier when she's scared - and her character, Karin, is scared quite a lot during Ring Around the Rosie. The fact that she already suffers from strange nightmares does not bode well when Karin inherits the country house where she and her sister used to spend their summers. She and her boyfriend head out there to begin packing things up and getting the house ready to sell. It's soon obvious that something just isn't right around there, with a lot of the mystery seemingly associated with a mysterious closet door. Despite some unsettling experiences in the house, though, her boyfriend leaves here there - out in the middle of the country with no transportation - for several days. That's when she meets Pierce (Tom Sizemore), a strange fellow who has been looking after the place. Pierce looks a little bit French to me, so I didn't trust him from the start. Things soon progress from weird noises and nightmares to unexplainable occurrences and real danger - a trend which continues after Karen's sister Wendy (Jenny Mollen) shows up a few days later.

It wouldn't be appropriate for me to describe the kind of things that happen as this film moves along its singularly unique track. I can say that the story takes on an atmosphere of increasing creepiness and suspense, though. I actually think the ending is pretty effective, and some viewers won't really see it coming - heck, even I was surprised by certain elements of it. The only problem I have with the film is the way it rushes through a few scenes without really tying them together - it feels like the director forgot to actually remove some deleted scenes. In a way, though, this disjointed sense of the later action works in concert with the story's idiosyncratic nature.

Obviously, I can't guarantee you will enjoy this film as much as I did. If you think every film is supposed to explain every single plot element to you at the end, chances are you won't regard this film too highly. This isn't an episode of Scooby Doo. Personally, I like and appreciate the odd horror film that doesn't spell every plot element out for me in the end. One's own imagination is a much more effective story-teller than any Hollywood scriptwriter, so what's wrong with a film leaving a few things open to your own interpretation? This film does make sense, but it doesn't cater to your every whim or leave time for questions and answers during the end credits. To some viewers, that's a bad thing, but I find it rather refreshing.

I am a huge horror fan and I LOVED this film. It was scary and kept me on the edge of my seat. Tom Sizemore, who I love, was absolutely awesome--and SUPER creepy. Gina Phillips and Jenny Mollen are really hot and alone are worth the few bucks I shelled out for the DVD. Go check it out!

Scary as hell. Awesome flick. Sizemore and Gina Philips are both great!!!! What an end, I could never predict it....

This is a movie that attempts to unseat Troll 2 as the undisputed worst horror film ever. At least Troll 2 was so bad it was entertaining. There is nothing entertaining in this disaster, unless you are into soft core girl on girl incest. We have wet T-shirts, hugging, cuddling, spooning in bed, and even a pillow fight! Meow. What more could you ask from a whore movie? Oh wait, I meant horror movie, and a few scares would've been nice. The production team couldn't afford 100 monkeys and typewriters, so they opted for 5 alleged "writers" sequestered away in 5 different locations with no interaction between them, and instructed them to write a script and use the phrase "Don't worry, I won't let you fall". Those scripts were then put through a food processor and reassembled by Helen Keller to creat the working script. The director decided to try out as many edgy camera techniques as possible to see what works best in case he ever gets to make a "real" movie. You get to see shaky cam, blurry cam, blurry shaky cam, slo-mo, 45 degree shutter (Tom Sizemore stole that one from Saving Private Ryan, or was it 28 Days Later?) POV cam, and cam & cheese, heavy on the cheese. The acting was as bad as the direction as Gina Phillips over-reacted and hyperventilated through the whole movie. She was afraid of rats, roadkill, chickens, Pierce, reflections, wind, closets, slopes, ponies, swings, and her own shadow, not necessarily in that order. Maybe if Gina had been in the audience istead of on screen, this movie would've scared at least one person. Tom Sizemore alternated between creepily friendly, lecherous, and psycho violent at the flick of a switch. Wendy just stayed horny most of the time. The editing was utterly incoherent. One minute they would be eating dinner, then Karen & Wendy are running up the driveway to Wendy's car which won't start (not in a horror movie!! What are the odds? Oh the humanity.)then a brief flashback to Pierce attacking Karen in the closet, to Karen throwing up in the toilet, punching out the medicine cabinet, then seeing Wendy isn't in the bed (maybe she's trying to jump start the car) then cut to a scene of Wendy dancing with Pierce in the tack barn. All this in the space of about 2 min. All this jumping from location to location for no reason, intercut with flashbacks and hallucinations, makes the "plot" hard to follow. Fear not, for it will all become perfectly clear with the low-rent M. Night Shyamalan wannabe twist ending. Turns out Wendy has been dead for 17 years. Wait...oh crap...don't read that part. **Spoiler alert** Too late now I guess. If you put the clues together you come to the conclusion that Grandpa had molested Karen and was getting an eye for Wendy. When Karen tried to stop him, apparently Wendy was knocked off the balcony and died. The scenes in the movie were Karen exercising her demons and getting some kind of closure. Pierce personified Grandpa and was a figment of her imagination. It is a cheap cop-out to explain away huge plot holes as being the result of a delusional mind. Shame on you filmakers. If you were to rewatch the film with the foreknowledge that Pierce represents Bad Grandpa, then the painfully clumsy, bad dialog becomes a string of disturbing sexual double entendre. Phrases like: "You've gotta show them who's boss and that they ARE going to be ridden." "Climb on, put your right hand here, don't squeeze your legs too tight, grab this, happy endings, wanna come with me, get in the bed, what do you do better than dance"? etc. I've seen a few thrillers like this lately that have resorted to the incest angle to create the antagonist. Giving Grandpas a bad name. This movie looked like a decent production cinematography wise, but was doomed by a lame script, weak premise, and horrible acting. The elements were there: house with red hallway, rats, fake deer that they got for half price because it was missing an antler, fake blood, tub, mirrors, wind and rain machines, guns and knives, axe, creepy music and boobies. What went wrong? I figure that the masochists among you will ignore advice to the contrary and insist on at least renting this mess just to see if it is really all that bad. A used copy is less than a buck, but then you have to pay shipping, and it is not worth it. If you happen to find a copy of this movie taped to a stick being used as a driveway reflector, then "borrow" it and see for yourself, but I don't recommend wasting any time or money on it. Don't worry, I won't let you fall.