A Truly Horrifying Horror Movie

Rating: 8/10 (5 March 2012)

An hour in and the viewer is wondering when this classic horror film is going to get scary. Even the infamous dream sequence, i.e. the climax of the movie, does not instill the fear of God in the viewer the way the bathroom scene of The Shining does. But it is this covertness that makes the film so creepy. There is nothing popping out at you, nothing even obviously scary. You never see the evil nature of the coven members; in fact, they seem good-natured: always treating Rosemary with care and politeness, even when she confronts them with a knife in fist and yet they manage to steal away her first-born child.
It's easy to make the disconnect when monsters and murders are involved; we don't see these things on a daily basis so why relate to them? We do however see nice but annoying old people and domineering husbands with Donna Reed type wives.
With its element of paranoia Rosemary's Baby is the precursor to the psychological thrillers of today but without the "twist" ending of a character being clinically insane. Rosemary's situation is real, just as it seems, and that's what is so disturbing. We cannot write the story off as being imagined so it sits with us long after the credits. The illusion of reality never seems like a pretense, never seems like a basis of suspense but Polanski manages to deconstruct it right beneath our feet.