A devil of a good time

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2005)

Honestly, one cannot ask more from a horror movie. Sans any special effects, it's all up to the story, acting, and directing to pull it all off, and they all work perfectly together to appropriate the correct mood.
Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband, an aspiring actor, move into a new apartment to start their future off... the apartment is near to where the husband must go to get work, and it's big enough that they may have room for children. Their initial excitement eventually leads to her becoming impregnated, though under suspicious circumstance. Eventually the pregnancy becomes less than welcome as physical pain and continually untrustworthiness of surrounding people start hemming Rosemary in...just as she begins to feel they are plotting against her baby.
Roman Polanski said of the book, "At first I thought it was a soap opera, and then I found myself reading it at four in the morning with my eyes burning." So the directing goes. Mia Farrow's acting is of young innocence that seems rather childish in some parts, but profoundly adult in others: she is a young woman with hopes and dreams and worst of all, fears. Rosemary's concern is never for herself, even as she discovers the plot against her; it's for her child.
Better, the audience is never really sure she's not insane. As the plot thickens away from cheery city life towards claustrophobic fear of entrapment, even as we sympathize with Rosemary her angst, her outward worry is not sympathetic to a world where everyone acts as if all is normal. For all we know, nothing could be wrong at all.
Then we find ourselves at the end, the coup de grace of horror movie design, where she makes a decision that is sure to shock even the most blase of viewers.
The cinematography in this film is amazing. At one point she's looking at a clock and it seems to warp in space and grow further away from her, fitting her insecurity expressionistically perfectly. Simple things like doorways are shown as if there's no mystery behind them at all, yet as they are opened they become foreboding.
For horror fans, there is little better.
--PolarisDiB