Rosemary’s Baby is about a woman, Rosemary and her husband moving to a new floor in an apartment building. After they move they get to know the neighbors, an old couple, while interesting they’re also a little intrusive and odd. The husband really takes a liking to them and they spend a lot of time with the couple and their friends. Rosemary is soon pregnant and things start getting strange. The movie continues on slowly, emphasis on slowly. Things go from odd, to bizarre to borderline disturbing at the end, which I will ruin later so spoiler alert….I suppose. This movie is old as fuck so what have you been doing in the last 55 years?
The acting is pretty solid. Mia Farrow puts in a good performance as Rosemary. The rest of the cast is pretty good as well. The director is a piece of shit but I’m not covering that in this review, google Polanski and how Chris Hansen would like him to have a seat. Anyway…my thoughts on this movie? Seeing that there is little to no special effects, aside from the younger woman falling out of the window and dying on the street, I can’t truly cover any of that. I guess I have to just give how I feel about the movie as a whole.
It is a slow burn. Slow burn movies can be great, if the payoff is truly crazy or worth the time spent. I have to state that I watched this at 11:35pm, after watching 6 other horror movies in the same seat. This movie is 2 hours long. It was 1:30am when I left and man this was a CHORE to get through. So much that an older woman sitting behind my friend fell asleep and was snoring halfway through. I nodded off probably around 4 to 5 times during the movie, this movie is the slowest of all slow burns. It isn’t like I can’t handle that type of movie, I enjoyed Witch, Midsommar, and The Exorcist. Hell Psycho could kind of be considered a slow burn and I love it. I think my biggest issue is the pay off with this movie. I’m looking at this with 2023 eyes, so maybe it was much more shocking back in 1968 but the fact that the baby is the legit son of the devil is kind of meh now. The cradle is black, the shawl over it is black and they never show the baby, which I do not have a big issue with, but her reaction to the whole situation is suppose to be the 2 hour pay off to this. I guess I wanted more, and I’ve seen this in the past. I remember enjoying it before but this time around it was rough.
Maybe my attention span isn’t made for this type of movie. Maybe we don’t want to admit that it hasn’t aged well, or maybe, just maybe it leaves a lot to be desired? I can say that having this the last movie in a 12 hour movie marathon was a bad choice. In the words of the girl leaving the theater behind me: “I think I’d rather birth the spawn of satan than watch this movie again.” I give Rosemary’s Baby a D. I admit the movie is decently made but maybe it just isn’t for me. A parting issue I can share, there is a scene where Rosemary and her husband agree to bang one out, and they show them getting undressed, for like 3 minutes, uncut, no change of angle, nothing. I don’t know much about filmmaking but that wasn’t fun to look at.
