Red Rose is a British horror drama and was released on August 15th. Available on BBC iPlayer and coming to Netflix, the show seemed to have some fans terrified and unable to sleep the minute of its release, and has been scaring some of the mobile phone users that are brave enough to watch it. The show may be from the same producers of comedic show, Sex Education, but this drama is far from anything like a fun teen show.
School's out and summer's in; that's until we get hit with a strange app that exposes the dangers of the online world in Red Rose, which follows a group of teenagers in Lancashire, who are hoping for the summer of their lives after their GCSE's. But when one of them downloads a strange app called Red Rose, there are terrifying consequences to those who do not obey its dangerous commands. The group will suddenly realise that their summer plans are going to be much darker, and quite a lot less fun than they had expected.
Red Rose Makes Phones Terrifying
This spooky and extremely captivating supernatural story has been classed as a Black Mirror meets Stranger Things vibe, with its exposure to online manipulation, the dark side of technology, and how it can ruin lives so easily. Yes, the show seems derivative of Black Mirror, not to mention the recent movies Choose or Die and Nerve, but Red Rose does enough to distinguish itself with a genuinely unsettling atmosphere.
Red Rose is one of those shows that has viewers screeming at the TV. When an invitation to download a strange app no one has ever heard of before pops up, Rochelle accepts it. Why? Maybe we would also do that out of curiosity; regardless, Rochelle now has bigger problems than failing her French exam because now she is being haunted by her phone. The show exists at the intersection of possibly supernatural horror and the everyday mundanity and petty problems of just being a young adult, both of which seem pretty horrific.
While we're in the comfort of our own homes, Rochelle is out there, not only dealing with daily life like bills, poverty, friendships, young love, and just being a kid, but also being tormented by some strange unknown thing on her phone. But why is Red Rose tormenting a normal school girl? There are many questions that fans will have running through their heads; although, they might not be focusing on those when they're hiding behind their cushions from dark lurking figures in the background, wonderfully jittery jump scares, and frightening pings every time we get a notification on our own phones.
Red Rose is Scaring Viewers
Red Rose might be one of the most binge-worthy recent shows to hit our screens, but it is also definitely not for viewers who are easily scared. Having only been released on August 15th, viewers are already talking about how they can't sleep after bingeing the creepy show. Fans took to Twitter to share their fears and feelings of Red Rose, with one saying, "Not going to sleep well tonight after watching Red Rose on BBC 3," and another saying, "I am finding BBC's Red Rose entirely too scary, but I can't tear my eyes away. Red Rose is FREAKING ME OUT in the best way."
The show has been best described as just purely creepy and it doesn't help that the suspenseful music, which creates way too much tension, "messes with your head," as one viewer wrote. The reason viewers are so scared by Red Rose might not solely come from the general horror vibe of the show, but more for the same reason we also love Black Mirror — that with the current trajectory of technology, this could happen to anyone. It could happen to you, your neighbour or your friend, and we can all sit and laugh when they do something stupid, but really, what's to say we wouldn't do the same?
It is not only a great horror series, but it is also extremely eye-opening in how easy it is to manipulate people online. For example, Rochelle genuinely believes that the app is trying to help her, yet it is threatening to essentially ruin her life if she doesn't obey; that doesn't sound like help. Yet, those situations are extremely difficult and happen more often than we realise to those around us; not necessarily the spooky supernatural stuff, but definitely the technology and invasion of privacy. Red Rose might scare the life out of us, but when looked at from a different angle, it is definitely a wake-up call to be careful what we do online, who we speak to, and how private we want to keep our lives, something also seen in the recent Web of Make Believe and The Most Hated Man on the Internet.
This makes the show incredibly realistic, very errie and actually quite scary. In fact, amongst its comparrisons to Black Mirror, various critics have praised the spooky show for its brilliant scare factor, and the The Guardian's Stuart Jeffries said it was an even creepier Black Mirror, so surely that gives new viewers a clear indication of what to expect when they press play on the dark side of the internet.