Using the Stephen King characters from "Rose Red," THE DIARY OF ELLEN RIMBAUER is a prequel to that little saga of a monstrous house that seems to be devouring its victims.This version of the Rose Red story is handsomely photographed and well acted but suffers from a script that never really bothers to explain anything. The viewer is left pondering plot details up until the very end, when again there is a letdown of even more ambiguity.Nevertheless, it manages to impress with the performances, the settings, the costumes and the plot itself is a mixed bag of so many thrillers from the past, even including the more genteel JANE EYRE or any of the Victorian novels that dealt with a house of dark decay and a sinister leading man.STEVEN BRAND is the darkly handsome head of the household whose soul is corrupted by carnal desires, an unfaithful man who brings his bride LISA BRENNER to live in Rose Red, where she is gradually subjected to all sorts of vague fears and terrors and things that go bump in the night.It's really silly stuff, not to be taken seriously, but does give rise to some goosebumps once in awhile. Eventually, the murky plot just gets muddier and all of the elements mesh into one big, slow-paced thriller that is efficient enough to produce a few chills but too ambiguous for its own good.

I saw Rose Red not too long ago, and not too long after having read the book. I went to Spain in the Summer of 2003 for a few weeks. I was traveling on my own, making a documentary for the University of California, and literally on my last day in Spain, I noticed a book called My Life at Rose Red, by Stephen King, at a liquor store in a town called Benidorm on the southeastern coast. I picked it up, since I had about 30 hours of travel ahead of me back to California and because I hadn't seen a book in English in quite some time. Having been a Stephen King fan for most of my life (I opened the floodgates of horror novels when I read `It' in 6th grade), I was amazed at how much of a character study the book was, but the movie dealt with the mystery of the haunted Rose Red, not with it's construction, which is what the book is all about. The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, I think, makes an honest attempt to go back and tell that part of the Rose Red story. What is truly odd, however, is that the movie that actually tells the story of Ellen and John Rimbauer, the story of the construction of Rose Red, about which Stephen Kings' book is written, is actually based on a journal of Ellen's that was written by a different author. I hope I have my facts straight here. King's book is actually in the form of Ellen's diary, although he delves suspiciously close to novel writing at many times. Who writes a diary like that? Anyway, this film telling the story that led up to the subject of the lengthy miniseries aired on ABC a couple years ago comes much closer to telling the story in the book from which that miniseries took its name. Its interesting that the miniseries needs a prequel to tell the story of the book upon which it is based.Okay, I'm getting a little repetitive. Much more digestible at less than half the length of Rose Red, the movie unfortunately never really comes out of the shadow of the movie that its content precedes, always coming across as a prequel that leads up to something else. Maybe it's because it didn't have enough life of its own or because I always got the feeling that it was purposely covering the holes left by Rose Red, providing an excuse for that movie having so little to do with the book upon which it was supposedly based. Either way, taken together the two movies provide a pretty interesting ghost story, one about a haunted mansion that actually has such a turbulent past leading to why it is haunted (hence the need for this prequel). It's just too bad that it takes a total of more than six hours for them to tell that story

The Diary of Eleen Rimbauer is creepy by all means,but an alright film to add at that.The Diary of Ellen did what (The Others) did, make a scary ghost story without any gore.The problem is that this is a prequel and it dosen't answer a lot of qustion to led to the first one, Stephen King's Rose Red. Rose Red was scary and had you on the edge of your,but the acting was alright(in which this one improves on).It made us wonder what the hell is wrong with the house.This calls for a prequel=the origin of a film or television show. The Diary showed Ellen,the original owner of the house and controler.And how the house became evil.It dosen't really show how the house got evil,but the evilfulness and sex addition of Ellen's husband and the events the house does to them. The acting was surperb,I mean all actors was excellent.Steven Brand who played Ellen's husband stole the role and film,with his wicked sideburns. So you want to be creep out,buy it,but it's still alright.

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer definitely held my interest enough and made me curious to see Rose Red. In my opinion, Ellen Rimbauer was the better of the two.I loved the historical aspect of the movie, giving a definite history and personality to the house than a typical haunted house movie does. It was unique and realistic in this way, perhaps one of the reasons I preferred it to "Rose Red".This movie contains much more mystery than "Rose Red" and is much less typical. Don't go into it expecting a regular horror/thriller movie, because that's not what it is. It's a great movie to make you think and wonder about the house, and does no more than insinuate answers, which leaves you in the mood, thinking, and drawing your own conclusions to the story, which I find much more satisfying.Left me dreaming about the Winchester Mystery House. Believable, unique and thought-provoking. 8.5/10.