Rose of Death (2006)

Pack: Tomb of Terrors
Disc: 8

Subgenre(s): Ghosts, Slasher

Year: 2006 (IMDb says 2007)

Rated: Unrated
Length: 99 minutes

Director: L. Alan Brooks
Writers: L. Alan Brooks, M. Mitchell, Fabian E. Quevedo, Matt Thomsen
Starring: Sandra Winogrocki, Luke Jones, Danny Countess

Synopsis: On prom night ten years ago, a group of drunken friends go too far when trying to scare a couple of their fellow classmates. After accidentally killing one of them, they decide they have to kill the other one in order to cover up the crime and protect themselves and their futures. Now, ten years later, as they start coming together for their high school reunion, each member of the group is being picked off one by one by a ghostly killer as some sort of revenge from beyond the grave.

Screencaps:

Review: Nothing new here. Rose of Death is little more than a ripoff of Peter Straub's Ghost Story but with a younger cast who can't act.

The opening scenes aren't too bad, but they're far too dark. It's difficult to tell if you are meant to see certain things or merely imagine them in the blackness. In particular, the car being pushed into the lake is almost invisible.

There's some horrendous line delivery too. The worst culprit is undoubtedly Sandra Winogrocki who plays Meg. Not only is she too quiet and sometimes unintelligible, but she's monotone and whiny with it. She gets better by the end when she starts shouting, but listening to her is still quite a chore.

If you've never seen Ghost Story, you'll be forgiven for thinking that I Know What You Did Last Summer had a huge influence on this movie too. The stereotypical "teenagers" are much the same and so are many of the uninspired kills as things turn into slasher mode.

The jump to ten years later with the same cast struggling to appear older than their years rather than younger suffers from a lot of lag between the vignettes. There aren't any characters to care about, and they are even less interesting en masse. One of the girls is pretty, but she's soon despatched by the ghostly killers without contributing anything sexy.

Rose of Death also boasts some of the worst detectives ever created. In most of their appearances, they only exist to describe the things which there was no budget to create. One of them is possibly meant to be comedic yet he comes across as vulgar and immature instead. The gallows humour falls flat, and the police procedures shown really make you glad that these aren't real cops.

Basically, Rose of Death is too slow, too cheap looking, and not very interesting after the first ten minutes. There's no suspense, it's not scary, and only one of the gore scenes is worthwhile as the punches are pulled on all the others.

Most Memorable Moment(s): The rather elderly prostitute.

Originality: A mixture of Ghost Story and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Best Line(s): "I don't think I'll ever forget this night."
Worst Line(s): "As far as we can tell, her body was stabbed right over there, and then it was drug over here where the rest of the work was done on it."

Best Effect(s): Shears through the throat.
Worst Effect(s): Severed head in toilet.

Goriness (out of 10): 4
Sexiness (out of 10): 2
Profanities (out of 10): 5

Hottest Actor/Actress: Mariana Crasto as Julie.

Picture Quality: Average
Audio Quality: Average

Rating (out of 10): 3

Trailer:


IMDb or Wiki: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1086368/

Final Thoughts: Poor man's version of Ghost Story with horrible acting.