Not suspenseful and pointlessly drawn out

Rating: 3/10 (1 February 2020)

After hearing from a lot of horror movie fans that this is regarded as one of the best horror films of all time, I was intrigued to watch this movie. I love a lot of old horror films, such as The Fly (1958), Night Of the Living Dead (1968), The Last Man On Earth (1964), and Carnival of Souls (1962) to name a few. I was disappointed in Rosemary's Baby, however. The only creepy and suspenseful scene in my opinion was the rape scene. Almost the entire movie was dedicated to showing the pregnancy, attempting to build it up for a big finale, but the only real adversity shown during the pregnancy was pain in Rosemary's torso. It didn't exactly add any anxiety to the viewer, in fact if not for the rape scene earlier in the movie, one would have thought the movie was just a drama depicting the everyday struggles of soon-to-be parents. Without giving any spoilers, the "big finale" was very anticlimactic, and the "twist" was easily foreseen in the first third of the movie. It was not a shock and even for back when the movie came out, other horror movies had more impactful, shocking twists, such as the aforementioned Carnival of Souls that predates Rosemary's Baby by six years. Mia Farrow's acting was terrible and way overdone. It wasn't believable and was over-exaggerated to the point of breaking immersion at times. John Cassavetes's acting however was pretty good, and the rest of the cast varied from okay acting to fairly decent acting. Although everyone except for John Cassavetes was way over-exaggerating to new levels in the very last act. In fact, the acting at the very end by everyone was so hammed up, it was both cringey and made me burst out laughing to think it was and is considered spooky. Again looking at other films around the same time and predating this movie, I can't see this acting being considered good even at the era's standards. Vincent Price always delivered great, believable performances, being in movies for a couple decades before Rosemary's Baby came out. I just don't see how Mia Farrow's acting was praised at the time. The "horror" of the movie is only slightly scratched on the surface and deals with themes explored in more depth in earlier horror films. They could have done a lot more with the horror aspects of the story. If they cut out the supernatural from the plot and made it a drama movie about a newly married couple, I think I would have enjoyed this movie more, and that's a type of film I've never been interested in before. It was 2 hours of disappointment and does not stand out from all the horror movies released in the 1960's. I would like to hope that the novel the movie is based on is better, but watching this movie does not make me want to read the book so I will probably never find out.