Where's Rose

Not sure why the good reviews are getting bot down votes. The movie is low budget, but decent! I wavered in my thinking who the real monster was, and in the end, my gut was right.

Only by then I assumed the movie had gone in a very different direction. It might seem like the same old "Changeling" type of movie, but if you stick with it til the end you'll likely be surprised.

The acting is fine, nothing that stands out as either fantastic or awful.

I don't want to spoil the plot so I'll end here, hopefully within the new required character minimum needed for reviewing. There's not much else to say, aside from the fact there are no real jump scares nor stomach turning effects.

The people who know me personally or my taste & preferences in films are pretty much familiar with the fact that I often like to take my chances with low-budget independent works.

Why do I do that? Well, being an avid cinephile, I am always in search of deserving, underrated titles. At times, I do happen to stumble upon some worthy features, however, in most cases, I return empty-handed.

"Where's Rose", Unfortunately enlists itself to my latter list of disappointments.

Whilst I appreciate the story for at least trying to be innovative and bring something new (kinda) to the table; the execution, however, leaves a lot to be desired. The direction here is inefficient, the editing should have been more sharper, more articulative! The performances aren't exactly horrible, although I do feel, with a more experienced cast things could have panned out in a much better fashion.

A decent attempt nonetheless.

As I sat down to watch the 2021 thriller "Where's Rose", I did so without ever having heard about the movie. I happened to stumble upon it by random chance, and of course with it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to give the movie a fair chance.

Writer and director John Mathis didn't manage to deliver a movie that fell particularly in my taste. The storyline and narrative of the movie was just simply too slow paced and uneventful. I didn't really care much for the characters in the movie, and then it becomes difficult to invest oneself into the narrative.

The storyline in "Where's Rose" was pretty straight forward, and I am sure that there is an audience out there for a slow burning movie such as this turned out to be. I, however, prefer movies with a bit more pacing to it. I found the narrative way too slow and uneventful, so there was very little enjoyment to be had here for me.

The acting performances in the movie were fair, however I just didn't care much for the one-dimensional characters that the actors and actresses had to portray.

As for "Where's Rose" being a thriller or horror movie, well... Let's just say you're not in for anything particularly thrilling or scary.

My rating of "Where's Rose" lands on a three out of ten stars.

First of all, the acting is fine. I don't understand why IMDB reviewers love to jump on bandwagons and parrot each other like birds in a forest, but the acting is FINE. Some of the actors were obviously more talented and experienced than others (the mother was a clear standout), but everyone did their best and were believable, for the most part. The only really rotten apple was the titular child, Rose. She is not very talented, and delivered her lines with all of the aplomb of a grade school production of Hamlet. So, the reviewers criticizing the acting are either just being nasty for no reason, or just want to add another penny to the pile. Don't even bother listening to those people.

As for the movie was fine, nothing to really call home about. It wasn't scary, the special effects were a joke, and the script was as simplistic as it gets with nothing even remotely unique happening. But the final act came out of left field, tied everything together, and made a truly mediocre film watchable. Let me tell you, those last 20 minutes had me INVESTED in what the ending was going to be. For that alone I bumped my review up 2 points.

The real horror in this movie can be found in the horrible parenting on display. You raise a son to his college years, fill his head with all of these delusions of grandeur because he's good at throwing a ball, and wonder why he behaves the way he does. Bad parenting is scarier than any Hollywood monster could ever hope to be, because it CREATES those monsters. Teach people to do their damn jobs as parents and so many of societies issues would disappear overnight.

That being said, movie? Mediocre.

Ending? Worth the run time.

Scariest thing about the movie? Entitled teenagers.

Took me a while to get round to this purely because some of the reviews were very negative.

When I did eventually watch it, I was so glad I did.

It's a great little mystery horror. Despite a low budget, the cinematography is great, the acting is on-point (with a few forgivable exceptions) and the script is clever. Theres' a twist that is sign-posted throughout but never obviously enough that it ruins the ending. I had suspicions of what was going to happen but still found the final reveal rewarding.

There are several negative reviews on IMDB but, for the most part, these seem to miss the point. In particilar, a review titled "Doesn't make any sense" misses the point entirely. There's more than one way to interpret this film and there is a lot of scope to unpick the symbolism; that reviewer clearly just took the whole thing literally.

As I said in the title, if slowburn horror appeals to you, and you don't mind lower-budgey (but still very well made!) indie films, you could do a lot worse than this!