Ring Around the Rosie

Film review by Thomas M. Sipos

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Ring Around the Rose (2006, dir: Rubi Zack; cast: Gina Philips, Tom Sizemore, Jenny Mollen, Randall Batinkoff, Frances Bay, Marc Lynn, Hayley McFarland)

 

 

 

 

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 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. 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 clichéd 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 (though 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.

 

 


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