Rebecca Ferguson Gave Us One of the Most Terrifying Stephen King Villain

A woman sings by a lake, dropping flowers into the water. Her soft-spoken voice is bewitching as a young girl walks up. There doesn’t seem to be any worry of stranger danger, the woman, Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), isn’t scary. When Rose holds the little girl’s hand with a painful grip, the feeding soon begins. “Honey, it’s the special ones that taste the best,” she purrs for an opening scene where audiences meet a new Stephen King monster, Rose the Hat, who represents the author’s love for gothic horror and destructive human behavior. Ghosts and an abusive father are old horrors in Doctor Sleep, the sequel to the 1980 The Shining. Director Mike Flanagan adapts this novel from King for the big screen and Rebecca Ferguson takes on the role of Rose, an actress who knows how to deliver intense performances. In the recent Mission: Impossible movies, she’s the skilled and deadly Ilsa Faust. Before Doctor Sleep leaves Hulu at the end of November, go watch to see Ferguson play an even more lethal presence, someone who could frighten Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) back down the sewer.

Doctor Sleep

Struggling with alcoholism, Dan Torrance remains traumatized by the sinister events that occurred at the Overlook Hotel when he was a child. His hope for a peaceful existence soon becomes shattered when he meets Abra, a teen who shares his extrasensory gift of the “shine.” Together, they form an unlikely alliance to battle the True Knot, a cult whose members try to feed off the shine of innocents to become immortal.

Release Date October 30, 2019

Director Mike Flanagan

Cast Rebecca Ferguson, Ewan McGregor, Zahn McClarnon, Chelsea Talmadge, Carl Lumbly, Alexandra Essoe

Writers Stephen King, Akiva Goldsman, Mike Flanagan

How Is Rose the Hat Similar to Other Stephen King Villains?

Director Tobe Hooper adapted King’s novel, Salem’s Lot, into a 1979 miniseries about a vampire infestation that takes over a small Maine town. The head blood-sucker, Barlow, is as hideous as the monstrosity in the silent horror classic Nosferatu, and like Count Orlok (Max Schreck), Barlow’s elongated, clawed fingers and jaws of razor-like teeth are ready for an attack. In Doctor Sleep, Rose the Hat is a “Shine” vampire. In one scene, she wanders through a food store, checking off a grocery list. You won’t think to run the other way when she approaches. Unlike the hideous Barlow, Rose is beautiful and dressed in a Bohemian style, along with a signature top hat. She looks like she could sit back and light up a joint while listening to Fleetwood Mac, but from the opening at the lake, it’s clear Rose is not to be underestimated.

She lures in children who have the psychic ability, “the Shining,” misleading them with her apparent kindness. They are then ruthlessly killed, their pain releasing the psychic essence, “steam,” which Rose and her followers, the True Knot, devour like vultures to roadkill. Killing brings out the True Knot’s feral behavior, their eyes giving off an eyeshine effect of an animal. “Eat well. Stay young. Live long,” these words from Rose, and how Ferguson delivers them, are so enticing, she can fool anyone into ignoring what being part of the True Knot involves. She seduces like a vampire from classic gothic horror, easily manipulating someone into thinking they have a decision when really, they are going right into her own plan. Rose hiding a vicious streak in plain sight, brings to mind Stephen King’s obsessive, killer nurse living in the isolated, wintry parts of Colorado.

Rose the Hat and Annie Wilkes Have Strong Parallels

Personality-wise, Rose the Hat might get on well with Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates). “Hi, there,” Rose whispers, forever remembering to greet whomever she meets. She may kill them, but she won’t lose her manners in the lead-up. For someone who hates dirty words, Annie can appreciate that. Rebecca Ferguson’s performance settles into a calm intensity, she doesn’t have to do much to be intimidating, and speaking in a hushed voice is a careful tactic. Because of this, she seems to have fun while playing with her food. In Misery (1990), there is nothing supernatural to Bates’ Annie, she is flesh and blood, who will do whatever it takes to make her favorite author Paul Sheldon (a bedridden, panicked James Caan) rewrite a book she hates. Breaking his ankles seems like a no-brainer. Other than insincere friendliness, Annie Wilkes and Rose the Hat can be linked to drugs.

Stephen King talked to Rolling Stone about crafting personal addiction problems into a brutal figure, “Misery is a book about cocaine. Annie Wilkes is cocaine. She was my number-one fan.” Addiction is a big part of Doctor Sleep too (as well as The Shining), where Rose and the True Knot are essentially drug addicts, searching for their next fix with no boundaries they won’t cross. They advance on the little girl by the lake, before rushing forward and pouncing on her. Even the death of one of their own means feasting on their “steam” when released, starving for every last bit they can get, nothing is off limits. In Rose’s most unsettling scene, it traps the audience in the center of one of her attacks.

The True Knot kidnaps little Bradley (Jacob Tremblay), showing the kid no mercy. Rose takes charge in torturing the boy, to extract as much steam as possible. She cuts into the boy, pushing the pain in and the screams out. The scene is all the more disturbing as Rose and the True Knot members feel euphoric from the “steam” they’re consuming. It’s a cold-blooded ritual that goes on and on, the sequence not cutting away like the movie did with the opening girl by the lake. Bradley’s final moments are excruciating, the audience is stuck watching it play out. Director Mike Flanagan talked about making the scene, which ranked as #80 on Shudder’s 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments.

He purposely left out showing the knife wounds Rose inflicted on the boy, what is left is blood that sprays onto his face, and the terror to the scene doesn’t come from “explicit violence,” as Flanagan puts it. Tremblay’s acting sells the torment the boy is suffering. Flanagan added that, “We cut the scene down to, I think, about a quarter of what it originally was. And it remains the scene where I would see people get up and walk out of screenings. Our executives would get up and walk out. My wife (Kate Siegel) got up and walked out. It’s a devastating sequence.” And it ends on Rose’s disappointment the child’s pain was lacking, “Damn, I thought he had another few minutes in him.” Nevertheless, Rose the Hat isn’t just a monster.

In ‘Doctor Sleep,’ Rebecca Ferguson Is Feared and Fearful

Charisma and her own psychic ability find Rose the Hat’s polar opposite in Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor). Unable to cope with what happened at the Overlook Hotel, Danny is now in recovery from alcoholism. He finds work at a hospice, figuring out a purpose for his “Shining” by helping patients ease into a peaceful death, while he chooses to be isolated in his personal life. Meanwhile, Rose ensures her victims suffer as she is devoted to protecting the True Knot, a personal, familial motive to this villain. Ferguson gets to play into this side of Rose, who is cruel to everyone, yet gentle to her loved ones.

The clan is starving, with the “Shine” ability getting more and more rare in the world. When Grandpa Flick (Carel Struycken) succumbs to his weak health, Rose is there to comfort him as he painfully dies, having stolen lifetimes from innocents. She tells him, sobs catching in her throat, “You watched empires rise and fall, cheered the gladiators in Rome, sailed across oceans to new worlds while you fed on kings and princes and popes.” While Danny is an outsider, Rose has formed a family for herself to take care of. And once Danny meets Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a young girl unburdened by trauma, he does everything he can to protect her. This puts him directly against Rose, who does everything she can to destroy them.

By the end, Rose the Hat isn’t redeemed and this earns her a satisfying death than what happens in It Chapter 2. The adult Losers destroy Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) through a lack of fear, hurtling out mocking insults. “You’re a sloppy bitch!” Richie (Bill Hader) yells. Overall, it’s anti-climatic. Rose’s vulnerability feels natural than the vulnerability to a shapeshifting, cosmic entity that gets reduced to a melted, hardened crust. In the pages of Doctor Sleep, Rose is pushed to her death. In the movie, this demise gets improved. She could have avoided her undoing, but arrogance withholds her from this. Rose maintains her strength right up to the end. Doctor Sleep recreates the tense staircase scene from The Shining, with Danny in place of his mother and the “Shine” head vampire in place of his father.

Rose the Hat’s Fate in ‘Doctor Sleep’ Is Terrific Poetic Justice

Rebecca Ferguson gives her own style to Jack Nicholson’s frenzied performance. She is just as mocking when she tells Danny, “I see the grease all over you. You don’t ‘shine’ quite the same. Growing up spoils that, I guess.” Her hand gestures and posture show no concern that the ax in Danny’s hands will cause harm to her. Maybe pain, but not a devastating wound. This arrogance leads to her demise. Danny tricks Rose, and the Overlook ghosts soon devour Rose’s steam letting her experience the fate she forced upon past victims. Not only do the ghosts take her steam, but it’s also over fairly quickly. Her top hat is left behind on the grand staircase, which perishes along with everything else in the fire Danny sets to the hotel. Rose the Hat is a powerful enemy, she doesn’t matter too much to the world. She is devoured as quickly as everyone else she fed on. “Damn, I thought he had a few more minutes left in him,” Rose said about little Bradley. The same can be referred to her.

Rebecca Ferguson, as Rose the Hat, leaves you hungry for her next scenes. The actress has said how much she enjoyed playing the villain, telling Bustle, “She’s so sexual and predatory and loving and caring and she has all the elements of what a human being has that has all the elements of a zest for life. And that mixed with a fucking great sense of style, let’s call a spade a spade, it’s very liberating, getting all of these aspects in one character.” The various layers certainly form a beguiling character to play and to watch.

Take her name, where “Rose” does not have one meaning. It’s more than a harmless flower with a beautiful fragrance, there are the thorns jutting out of the stem. If you aren’t careful, it will catch skin. Rose the Hat can also remind one of another Mike Flanagan villain, in the ghost of Olivia (Hill House) and the mysterious deal maker Verna (The Fall of the House of Usher), both played by Carla Gugino. Whether it is an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, or Shirley Jackson, these women share desirable and inviting traits, ending up dangerous for those they draw in. For Rose the Hat, this is what makes her so elegant and ruthless, lavishly mythic and mortal. She eats fear, a well-spoken predator as she hovers over prey.

Stream Doctor Sleep on Hulu in the U.S.

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