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There are few films as genuinely unsettling and disturbing as director Roman Polanski’s horror masterpiece Rosemary’s Baby. Taking the great time-honored and nigh universal story of a happy couple setting down roots with an eye on starting a family, this movie effectively flips idle domesticity on its head, leaving viewers reeling with its quiet and raw power. This 1968 motion picture tells the story of Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse (an impressive John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow) and their first fateful year at the Bramford apartment building in NYC. Guy is an upwardly mobile actor desperate for his big break. Rosemary is a budding young socialite with an eye on comfortably nesting and beginning a family. What could have been a straight family melodrama in lesser hands becomes an express ticket to terror thanks to the capable vision of writer Ira Levin and director Polanski.
Over the years, Rosemary’s Baby has stood quietly and proudly on top of the heap of well-regarded horror films. Not even a cheesy 1976 made-for-TV movie sequel entitled Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby could dim its legendary light (though it was nice to see Ruth Gordon reprise her Oscar-winning role as devilishly sly Minnie Castevet from the first film). Ditto 2014’s effort to remake the original film via an ill-advised NBC miniseries. By wide consensus, both productions wildly missed the mark of primal psychological terror which the first film achieved. However, with the passage of time Paramount, the original studio which released Rosemary’s Baby back in ‘68, has now seen fit to explore further the story of “Black Bramford” and its dark backstory in a brand-new and upcoming movie.
From our “You’re in Dubrovnik, I can’t hear you” pals over at The Hollywood Reporter comes our first good look at the upcoming feature film Apartment 7A, the official prequel to classic thriller Rosemary’s Baby.
Like most prequels, Apartment 7A is meant to fill in some of the blanks and ambiguity which its predecessor left unspoken (a quality which some dinosaurs such as Yours Truly actually prefers). Actress Julia Garner stars as Terry Gionoffrio, a name which astute students of Rosemary’s Baby will instantly recognize as being that of the live-in dancer staying with the elderly Castevets and who – SPOILER! – winds up taking an unfortunate fall down onto some pretty hard NYC concrete early on in the original movie. Anyhoo, Terry is alive and well for the time being in the prequel and being tended to by Minnie and Roman Castevet for their own nefarious ends. In a nice bit of casting, the legendary and Oscar-winning actress Dianne Wiest essays the role which brought Ruth Gordon such late-in-life acclaim. She’s joined by Kevin McNally (Cry Freedom, Sliding Doors, The Crown) as her hubby and co-conspirator.
So there you have it: Apartment 7A, the prequel we didn’t really know we needed to classic Rosemary’s Baby. Will it be even remotely as eerie and creepy as its predecessor? We’ll all find out when it lands on Paramount+ on Sept. 27.
