Netflix has come out with yet another horror fiction, Red Rose. Originally released by BBC on August 15th, 2022, the show is about a bunch of teenagers facing probably the worst horrors of their lives after downloading a dodgy app and making deadly demands.
The show hit Netflix on February 15th. The leads of Red Rose include Isis Hainsworth playing the role of Roch, the apparent leader of the group. Her character in the show is fearless, bold, and chic. We know of her from another Netflix film Metal Lords.
Next in the lead is Amelia Clarkson of Stomping Grounds and All-Stars as Wren Davies. Best friends with Roch, Wren is also her sidekick, and it seems she doesn’t mind being one. Natalie Blair playing Ashley Banister is another character that stands out in the show.
She is a caring, hardworking, and loyal character who is always ready to be a partner-in-crime for her friends. We’ve seen Natalie Blair in famous series such as Crossbones and Neighbours. The show has Ali Khan as Taz, who joins the original group a bit later than the rest. Even so, he is a softie with a good heart. You may have seen him in another Netflix series, The School for Good and Evil.
Ellis Howard is playing Ant, aka Antony, who is a sweet friend to Wren and has secrets of his own. Harry Redding plays Wren’s boyfriend, Noah, who gets involved in the app’s tricks because one of its dares is directed at him.
The show Red Rose is his debut series. And lastly, we have Ashna Rabheru playing the role of a quick-witted and inventive nerd who is also an outcast, Jaya. She is famous for her character Sex Education.
Red Rose Storyline
Red Rose begins in a small town in Northern England, with one teenager named Alyssa looking extremely tortured and later jumping off the roof of her house. The show then introduces our main characters, who seem to have just gotten over with their semester examinations.
Roch, or Rochelle, is introduced as a confident and strong personality, which may be because of her situation back at home with her mother’s suicide, the responsibility of her sisters, and being low on funds too. Roch is the first among her friends to get roped into the tactics of the sketchy app Red Rose. The application promises the fulfillment of her wishes, and she ends up downloading it, no questions asked.
This act makes her seem more susceptible than one might think, which probably is because she is still a teenager. The app at first works just fine by either helping her get electricity back at her house or by calling her a dress and shoes for the big end-of-semester party the group is about to attend, but it is when it dares Roch to kiss Wren’s newly made boyfriend, Noah when trouble begins.
This is not a hollow dare but one that comes with enough material to blackmail people to get them to do anything the app wants. Rochelle is easy to manipulate for Red Rose. As her relationship with her best friend, Wren, gets poorly severed because of the kiss and a few other things, she finds herself incapable of getting out of the mess Red Rose has created in her life.
After Roch faces the tragedy, the next in line is Wren. She is struck with immense grief and guilt after losing her best friend. And it is during this vulnerable time that Red Rose strikes again. She also gets the link for the app in the form of a text message from her dead best friend, and obviously, she downloads it. Weird things happen with her the same way they did with Roch.
She manages to turn everybody against Wren, and she finds herself distressed. Red Rose has plans to push Wren off the edge and eventually get her killed, just like it did with Roch and its other previous victims.
But before any such thing can happen, we see Jaya, who is a coding enthusiast who finally joins the group and lends them the technical help they so desperately need. She discovers that Wren’s phone is fully hacked and lets the group in on whatever knowledge she has of Red Rose.
So while she decodes the app, the other group members agree to move about without a phone or any other technical device on them. They remain suspicious of everything digital around them. After many events taking place throughout the eight episodes, we find that it was Simon, Wren’s mother’s new lover, who had been threatening Wren and had been on the lookout for her to kill her.
In one of the later episodes, he eventually manages to get Wren to himself and finally get rid of her. But he ends up killing himself in the event. With his death, the people at school and our main group of friends assume that things will finally go back to normal, though there is no such clear answer.
When everything seems to be peaceful, and things seem to be wrapping up nicely, it is once again Jaya who, with the help of Antony, finds that Simon is actually under the control of someone else and that some cruel geeky people pick on vulnerable people for their pleasure. She figures that all that has been happening to them is because of some high command called ‘the Gardener.’
The rest of the episodes follow this plot and continue the story forward. There is a showdown between the mastermind of this app and Wren, where she ends up slaying him. It is Jaya who ends up getting rid of the site and all of its data. Rick ends up taking the blame for the death of that man, ‘the Gardener.’
We get a backstory on how the Red Rose application came to be. It was Jacob Taylor, a very intelligent programmer, briefly introduced in the show before. We find that he had built the app initially to chat with Alyssa, the girl that jumped off the roof of her house in the first scene of the show. He was seemingly in love with her and wanted to go out with her. But his coder friends, one of them being ‘the Gardener,’ managed to manipulate him into doing something unforgivable, the guilt of which made him take his own life.
It is just when the audience feels that the plot has been tied up well we see Jaya coming into contact with a woman claiming to be ‘the Gardener.’ This scene makes one thinks if there’s a possibility for a season two.
Red Rose Review
The Clarkson twins seem to have managed to pull off one of the classic horror genres in a digital era. This theme of technology developed by one of our own coming to haunt us back is not completely new, though it may be rising and relatively less explored.
The entire show revolves around young teens, a generation so surrounded by technology. One would assume that a generation considered so swift when it comes to technology would be more cautious and aware while using it, but that is not the case. Young, naïve teens fall into the trap of an app that threatens them to do unthinkable things. Seems as real and honest as it can get.
The show is a courageous move on the part of the creators and probably one of its kind too. The characters don’t look completely unfamiliar, but it still manages to be a refreshing watch. The show may be under the horror genre, but it doesn’t have the usual jump scares or the clichéd otherworldly presence. Despite that, the show has managed to maintain a growing sense of mystery and creepiness.
The internet has a dark side to it, the dark web, as people would call it. It exists in real life, and it exists in the show. Another way the show has managed to incorporate the harsh reality into its plot and become a learning lesson for teenagers around the world. Having said that, the way the show has tried to use the concept may feel superficial and half-heartedly done to some.
Several teens are being tortured and murdered because of an app, and no one knows who built the app and why. Such a mystery takes place in a small town in Manchester, all because one guy dearly loved a girl, and somehow things spiraled into chaos because of it.
Some may say that it is a disappointing reason that the writers could have looked for something better others may believe that love is, after all, the strongest force in the world and it can make people do things they cannot even imagine.
The show has a bunch of characters as its main leads, and maybe it’s because it is based in Bolton, Manchester. There is a weird sense of humor added to the dialogue. The characters all have their struggles and problems that they are dealing with on their own time.
Both Wren and Roch have broken families and troubles at home. Jaya, the nerd, is an outcast who is being bullied. So while everyone has something going on in their lives, they are still, almost all of them, likable and interesting.
The characters are all set up according to the requirement of the plot, and there is not something completely new and never-before-seen. Even so, they have managed to pull you in and grip you till the end of the show. They have a sense of humanity in them. They don’t feel very far away from us.
Their personality traits and the problems they have back at home all make them more human and life-like. Have we similar characters before? Yes. Are they still interesting and fresh? Also yes. The show has stuck to writing very normal, original, and natural dialogues.
Where a lot of YA shows try to incorporate the new generation lingo in their dialogues to make it seem more ‘real’ and ‘relatable,’ the Red Rose has not indulged in that. They have an underlying sense of humor in them, which may even be because of the Bolton accent.
Isis Hainsworth playing Roch is our main character for at least the first two episodes of the show. And Amelia Clarkson follows her by playing Wren. Both Hainsworth and Clarkson seem to have done a very convincing job playing their respective characters. The on-screen chemistry they have portrayed as best friends right off the bat is something to look out for, as it doesn’t last that long.
The lack of characters that are just downright mean and a bully for no reason whatsoever and the lack of clichéd characteristic traits in the female and male leads is like a balm to the soul. Wren, Roch, Ashley, Noah, and even the supporting characters are all people that have depth and pain, and love for one another. Red Rose is a show that has high-school characters that are not one-dimensional, and that is something to look out for.
There may be some things that may irk the audience, like the song choice with songs like Rhythm is a Dancer by Snap! or Better off Alone by Alice Deejay, which are songs released in the 90s, or the fact that at some points in the story may seem a bit stretched or slow. Another thing that could be considered a negative would be that story has parts in it that at times feels a bit lost, almost as if the writers were confused as to what they want from the story.
Our Verdict
Despite all of this, the direction of the show and even the genre itself is something that has not been that vastly explored yet. Keeping this in mind, the show feels like a fairly good attempt at putting out a bold commentary on the excessive and rash use of the internet by young and easily influenced teenagers. It is a cozy, quick watch for all who love the ‘being-at-the-edge-of-my-seat’ feeling. We give this show a rating of 3 out of 5.
Our Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ [3/5]
Also Read: Best Science Fiction Shows on Netflix
