don't watch this if you like big titty, explosion, bloody killer stuff

Rating: Null/10 (1 May 2001)

(careful of them there spoilers!)
Rosemary's Baby is a standout in the genre of gothic psychological thrillers. Hitchcock's Rebecca is the only other film I know at the top of that category, and of all Horror films only a handful can compete with it for "best ever."
Polanski's direction is simply amazing. A good common description in a lot of these reviews would be "hallucinatory paranoia." The film creates a sense of dislocation, through the juxtaposition of occult imagery with a modern urban setting, and a subtle sense of building tension, through devices such as the deadline of the baby's expectancy date vs. the conspiracy being woven around Rosemary. These devices enhance her vulnerability and sympathetic quality, and make every hinted threat feel like a threat to you the viewer. This is a movie that you piece together with your mind but also experience with gut emotion.
What sets this film apart from standard crappy blood and guts horror, besides its subtlety, is its metaphoric themes. The "Faustian bargain" made by Rosemary's husband, to further his acting career by selling his fatherhood, reflects on the nature of acts of creation within the entertainment industry and traditional values within organized religion. I would go so far as to say that this film is intended to criticize bourgeois values within capitalism, through allegory (if I knew more about Polanski's films.)