by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
After debuting on BBC last year, Red Rose has dropped in the states on Netflix, but is the horror series worth the binge?
The series follows a group of friends in Bolton, England, the summer after completing their exams ahead of college. They find their lives thrown into peril by the nefarious Red Rose app. It gets its thorns into the teens with alluring promises, before turning the table on them with threats, and by twisting their actions in the eyes of their social media audience.
Among the group, we’re introduced to best friends Roch (Isis Hainsworth) and Wren (Amelia Clarkson). They’re the leaders, whose relationship is stressed by the divisive wedge of the app. The only actor I had any previous experience with (at least that I could recall) was Hainsworth, and she and Clarkson are the two serving most often as our point of view characters. When looking at the group as a whole, I too often found their dynamics hampered by cringey dialogue, including one of the worst characters at reading a room I’ve ever seen. For a group of supposed friends, they too often let themselves get bogged down in petty squabbles. Someone’s always seemingly doing something that needs to be apologized for. There are adults in this world that are paying varying degrees of attention to their children throughout, but none of them add much worth speaking on. The focus really is on the main group of teens.
I found the show’s premise intriguing. It’s not terribly subtle about its message, but the dangers of social media — particularly on this age demographic — are staggering. Suicide plays an integral part to the plot, so being aware of your triggers is something that should be taken into account when deciding whether or not to give this a shot. However, the illustration of negative impacts of social media and how online reactions can impact people mentally is where I feel the show is at its best and most pointed. Though, I’m not sure I needed the parallel dating app storyline to double-down on a message that’s already obvious, particularly when it doesn’t feel like it pays off. A portion of the show’s fifth episode, “The Lockdown,” focuses on modern society’s connectivity and how it uses that to create a sense of paranoia was its most effective.
The shame of this show is that too often I find its message undercut by how often it feels like it ironically gives in to the surface level writing tropes of cheap horror. Too often I found myself rolling my eyes at the people we are supposed to be rooting for due to their idiotic decision-making, like sitting with your back to the door when a crazy app has it out for you, or running upstairs as someone is chasing you trying and to kill you. Even after it becomes a team mission and everyone is aware of the threat posed, our Mystery Inc. wannabes are still too often isolated, or too far out over their skis. (Author’s note: I feel obligated to note that I wrote this comparison down before one of the crew literally makes the comparison in the show, but it shows it’s apt I suppose.) Another aspect of the show that really neuters the message is how it wraps up by undercutting what I thought the main message of the show is supposed to be.
For a show about social media, aside from the red-tinted cinematography, which I found clever, the way the actual way the social media aspect of the show is shot looks cheap and tacky. Even for someone who doesn’t have an Instagram, the filters that the app uses look ridiculous to my eyes. I guess if it’s impossible to get off your device, it doesn’t particularly matter the effectiveness of the package it comes in after installed.
There are other creative decisions, like the show’s odd pacing and perhaps even odder needle drops, that too often just had me scratching my head.
Despite the intriguing premise and undeniably powerful overarching message, Red Rose can feel like a slog at times during the show’s eight-episode run, with the overwhelming thought that the story would have been better served by tightening up and shrinking itself to feature length instead.
Score: 5/10
Red Rose is currently streaming on Netflix
You can read more from Jake Bourgeois, and follow him on Twitter and Letterboxd