Rating of
3.5/4
Suspense at it's best.. Pure genius.
mdtinney - wrote on 09/27/09
"Rosemary's Baby" rules. One of Ira Levin's best stories makes an effortless translation to the big screen thanks to a script that sticks very close to the source, a stellar cast, and the craft of Roman Polanski. The weird thing about "Rosemary's Baby" is that it's generally considered to be a horror movie, and yet there is very little of the supernatural in it. Sure it involves a coven of witches who conspire to impregnate Rosemary with child of the devil himself, but aside from one hallucinatory scene where the devil may actually manifest, "Rosemary's Baby" is really a conspiracy film. The horror is not in the fact that Rosemary is going to give birth to the Devil's child; we already know this going into the film. What's scary about it is how Rosemary is completely unaware that something terrible has happened to her, and that her husband has sold her out. Even after she begins to catch on that something weird is happening, she doesn't realize how bad it really is. It's not that the witches want her baby, it's that they already *have* her baby. The baby's father is, literally, Satan. It's compelling to see the way Rosemary is deceived throughout the film. One of the most chilling scenes is when Rosemary finds someone she thinks she can confide in and then finds that they, too, have turned her over to the people that intend to exploit her. It's as if, in all of New York, she can't find a single person who isn't in on it. The ones that aren't in on it...die. Mia Farrow is the best thing about this movie, although everyone else is good, too. Farrow looks so delicate and vulnerable that you can't help but want to shield her somehow from what's going on. Watch the way the film portrays the coven, too. They're sinister, but other than their wicked intentions and the fact that they worship Satan, they're only a bunch of daffy old people. I find that many people are put off by their own expectations of the film. They go into it as if they're going to see a devil baby in it, which is simply a footnote in the film. By the time Rosemary sees the result of her unholy pregnancy, the horror has already happened to her. She doesn't realize she's been a victim until it's all over. For its genre, and really, for any genre, this film is a perfect film. Why is it so perfect? In my humble opinion, it is all in the absolutely superb storytelling. All of the dialog that slowly ensues throughout the movie offers the audience little clues bit by bit, unbeknownst to us, however. Unless you believe Rosemary from the outset at the point at which she begins to suspect what's happening to her, you really need to wait until the end of the film to see what was in store all along. And once you're at the end of the film, if you take a moment and think back of all the dialog served up by all the principles and key supporting players throughout the film...the Castevets ("my work takes me all over the world"), Hutch, Dr. Saperstein, Dr. Hill ("I need to take a blood sample from you...uhhh, a blood test"), and the sudden professional luck of Guy Woodhouse, it all becomes eerily plausible, and a perfectly (and sick, of course) planned scenario. I never read the book, but, I wonder if there are even more characters in on the whole plot. At any rate, this film presents a masterpiece of suspenseful and perfectly metered storytelling, and for this reason, I call it a perfect film.
