Rosemary’s Baby is a psychological horror film directed by Roman Polanski. The plot follows young woman, Rosemary (Mia Farrow), who finds herself suddenly pregnant one day after having a horrific dream. Over the course of her pregnancy more and more odd occurrences play out, before things take a sharp turn towards the sinister.
The demonic angle of the story didn’t work for me, I won’t go to much into it as I don’t want to spoil it too much, but I didn’t find that part of the story scary. I could see from the beginning where they were going with it, but no matter how much they built the reveal it did little for me in the end.
Rather where I do find scares in this film is the way it depicts the life of a woman in the 60s. The bias towards the husband, the blatant sexism, the belief that women can just be hysterical. I found the abuse and mental anguish that Rosemary suffers from those around here to be far more chilling than anything else in the film. Maybe that was the intent?
I think in terms of horror cinema as a whole you can see how this film would go on to inspire a lot of other people and projects. There are elements here that would become genre main stays for decades after. So credit must be given for that.
Personally, I didn’t find it very interesting and often found myself losing focus with it and becoming distracted, I think it was very slow in pacing and didn’t have a lot to keep me engaged.
Overall, though I can understand its significances, I found it to be overly slow and the main horror aspect of the film feel flat for me.
Pros.
The genre significant
Showing how hard it was to be a woman in that time period
A few memorable moments
Cons.
The demonic plot line did nothing for me
It was far too slow
2.5/5
Reviewed by Luke
Another Millennial Reviewer 