THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
It’s so scary for a parent to prepare having a child because all you want is for it to grow up healthy. But sometimes, that’s a part of nature past our control.
PLOT
Based on the titular Ira Levin novel, Rosemary’s Baby follows actor Guy Woodhouse and his wife Rosemary O’Reilly settle into an apartment in New York City, the Bramford. Apparently, the previous tenant was an elderly woman who displayed odd behaviors before passing away, as in moving furniture in front of a linen closet she was still using. This makes their friend Edward Hutchins openly share worry due to the building’s past, but they still stick with moving in. Rosemary settles in fine when she befriends another woman at the laundry room named Terry (Victoria Vetri). Their friendship would sadly be short lived as the next time she’d see her, she would find her dead of an apparent suicide as her body appeared to have fallen from the seventh floor of the apartment. She and Guy then find new friends out of an older couple that are also neighbors, Roman & Minnie Castavet who took Terry in when she was recovering from drug addiction. When they have dinner together, Minnie gifts Rosemary a pendant containing a tannis root. Despite Guy’s hesitance, he doesn’t mind seeing them repeatedly. Success then starts coming his way as he gets cast for a new lead after originally casted actor Donald Baungart suddenly goes blind. This inspires the husband to want to have a baby with his wife. On the night they plan to conceive, Minnie gifts them chocolate mousse for dessert but Rosemary believes hers to have an under taste. When she goes to sleep, she has a nightmare of being raped by a demon. By the time she wakes up, she finds scratches on her back. Guy admits it was from him because he had sex with her while she was unconscious, not wanting to miss baby night. The conception seemed to have worked as she is confirmed pregnant by the doctors two weeks later, with the baby due by June 28. The Castevets become so excited for her that they recommend her to obstetrician Abraham Sapirstein who insists on avoiding prescribed pills & vitamins. The first trimester would be a rough patch for her as she would lose a lot of weight than usual and suffer abdominal pains. During a holiday party, her friends notice how unwell she feels and insists on getting a second opinion from another doctor. But when she argues with Guy about it however, the pain suddenly goes away. When Hutch later visits her, the Castavets notice and Guy suddenly arrives as if he was called by them to come home. This would sadly be the last time she’d see him as he would later fall into a coma and die. At his funeral though, Rosemary meets his companion Grace (Hanna Landy) who gives her a book he meant to give before he died. The book is revealed is to be of the studies of witchcraft called “All of them Witches”. As she reads it, she finds a page of Satanist Adrian Mercato and his son Steven, as well as a clue written by Hutch that the name is an anagram. She cracks the code and confirms it to be so when decoding ‘Roman Castavet’ to be an anagram for ‘Steven Mercato’. Off of this, she worries of the Castavets and Sapirstein to be part of a coven. She shares her worries to Guy, but he ignores it by throwing away the book. She tries to cut ties with the Castavets, but stays in contact out of pity when Sapirstein shares that Roman is falling ill and is having a tour to Europes as a farewell to his life. With the due date getting near, Rosemary suspects Guy to be in cahoots with the coven ,that maybe he made a deal with them to give their baby in exchange of a successful career. She confirms her suspicion when reaching out to the blind Donald, who confirmed he accidentally swapped ties with her husband before he lost his sight. She then confirms Sapirstein to be part of the coven when she overhears his secretary comment on his smell of tannis root. She reaches out to her original doctor Hill for help, but he mistakes her to be delusional, resulting in him to call Sapirstein who arrives with Guy and threaten to commit her to a psychiatric hospital if she doesn’t comply. When returning to the apartment, Sapirsteij sedates her as she goes into labor and gives birth to her baby. When Rosemary wakes up, Guy tells her the baby was a stillborn, but she hears its cries in another room. She goes through the same door that was blocked by the last tenant and finds her baby in a bassinet surrounded by other coven members. She finds herself in shock to find to see its eyes to be unordinary. Roman shares the child to be named Adrian and has his father’s eyes, Satan’s, making her child the Antichrist. This confirms the rape she dreamt of to have been real all along. As Guy confesses of the deal he made, she spits at his face once he considers having their own child. Although the coven do not force her to officially join them, the film ends with her maternal instincts getting the best of her as she rocks her baby’s cradle.
THOUGHTS
Horror is known to shock you in the most unordinary ways possible and with this case, writer/director Roman Polanski ensures that you’re shocked from start to bottom. This is one of the earliest examples on tackling the idea of the Antichrist and he handles it very well because it approaches it too good to be true. With an eery score by Kryzsztof Komeda and impressive editing by both Sam O’Steen & Bob Wyman, you’re accurately feeling a case of isolation that our protagonist Rosemary herself is going through. Mia Farrow shows her to be one who is trying to maintain security through everything domestic situation that comes her way and that tells the true lesson being taught where no matter the gender, you have to defend yourself from what troubles you in any shape or form. She was the most pleasant person when we first see her and once she was raped by Satan, her innocence was taken away and struggles to grip with reality. As each day had passed by, she would figure out what had happened until it was too late. My heart sank when Dr Hill sold her out because it was like another layer of her feminist was taken away before her very eyes and she can’t get that back either. In some cases, you could argue she could’ve fought for freedom by eliminating the antichrist but she couldn’t because it was still her child and the firstborn will always have a strong bond with one’s mother. It is very easy to identify the trio of the Castavets & Sapirstein as villains because each actor (Ralph Bellamy, Sidney Blackmer & Oscar winner Ruth Gordon) are able to have their own flair in starting out friendly to revealing their true colors to be manipulative people who want the apocalypse to commence with the antichrist. That proves you can’t just trust anyone no matter how kind they appear. The true villain though is undoubtedly going to be Guy. John Cassavettes made an ultimate scum out of him because he was so desperate for success that he’d selfishly sell his wife to the devil to gain it. The fact his cover would be fucking her while she was sleeping proves men like him are the reason society struggles to be better than it should. The only true friend she had after Terry died (likely caused by the coven) was Hutch. Maurice Evans in his given time was able to be observant enough to know something fishy was going on. This makes his death all the more tragic because had he been more ahead of the curve as in not lose his glove that paved the way for the coven to curse him, he would’ve given Rosemary a better fighting chance. And because she doesn’t, the world is doomed. In conclusion, Rosemary’s Baby is an impressive horror film for being too real to be possible. If you’re considering having a child and have second thoughts, maybe this film can give you an answer on your final decision.
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