With the rise of short video content apps like TikTok and YouTube shorts, there are, unfortunately, plenty of kids that do stupid things, egged on by the internet. Red Rose plays with this idea in a mysterious, possibly possessed, mobile application. The show feels slightly reminiscent of Black Mirror’s Shut Up and Dance episode, albeit in a more supernatural, creepy way, and there’s a thread here on how teens’ grief and other negative emotions are manipulated for increased internet usage. While the certain episodes feel like it dragged, the series is still a fairly solid watch if you’re wanting a spooky time.
When one of a group of friends downloads the mysterious Red Rose app, plans change. What starts innocently as a game of admiration rapidly descends into something much darker.
A group of teens in Bolton get addicted to a mysterious app called Red Rose. Starting off with seemingly harmless dares, Red Rose starts to urge them to increasingly dangerous demands that may lead to deadly consequences.
Red Rose has a supernatural element, but the show’s applications have some consequences that we’re familiar with online. Friendships breaking off due to incriminating posts, miscommunication in online messaging, and misinterpreting online actions are familiar, especially for teens who have grown up entirely on the internet. Even though the posts technically are just words and images on screen, it still has real life implications. It’s the show’s understanding of these consequences that give the series an anxiety-ridden, foreboding tone all throughout, and it makes it all the more eerie knowing that it’s hard for everyone to separate from it, given how ingrained it already is in the world.
You know, films and shows like these make me want to throw all my devices in the ocean, but because this post (and this entire job) only exists because of the internet…
