The Horror Underneath a Pregnant Woman's Belly.

Rating: 10/10 (13 March 2005)

Pregnancy is the time in a woman's life that, despite the hormone imbalance and the emotional changes, is charged in an overwhelming among of love and support and the notion that she is slowly gestating a human life, male or female, a child that will bring her (and her family) happiness. Motherhood has been depicted as beautiful, symbolic, Woman being Creation in progress in ancient cultures, a Thing to venerate and respect and even worship, Something capable of ensuring the continuation of a family line, a tradition, and hence, life and culture for an entire strata of society. Nothing is supposed to go wrong, or at least, not at the level of what happens to Rosemary Woodhouse's pregnancy, which is the ultimate wrong thing.
What Ira Levin seems to want to tell us in this "plot" surrounding Rosemary's pregnancy is that society and its religious tradition can be substituted by something much more sinister, as-yet unseen but gestant -- the force of will, the creation of Man's own version of what he believes will be the new wave of humanity. Is God dead? Well, considering the timing of the novel and the movie with society's disillusionment with Establishment, the onset of Vietnam, the loss of innocence of a country just years ago with the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, He just as well may be. Religion and religious figures pop up during the movie, but seem unable to bring any comfort and only add to the vague sense of unease that permeates ROSEMARY'S BABY.
And this nagging unease is precisely what both author and director give us: something not quite, completely there, something that seems to be happening just off-limits, barely overheard through the flimsy walls which divide these prewar apartment buildings converted into chic, livable spaces. The way the banal elements that are so much a part of our lives are overthrown so subtly makes the horror that is the movie's denouement even more tragic. Surely the nice neighbors can't be more than just that -- they're so helpful... well, maybe a little too helpful. Surely the death of that girl Rosemary befriends was just a freak suicide. Surely the doctor's recommendations for Rosemary are the best -- don't doctor's always know what's good for us? And surely, one's own partner would not have done the unthinkable in order to advance professionally now, would he?
Paranoia of the unseen is a powerful way to tell a horror story without ever giving away any shock cuts or showing the boogeyman. While it becomes abundantly clear early on that this is a story of witchcraft of the worst kind, the only time some of it makes its way in front of the camera is in the extremely stylized ritual/rape scene, and even then, since Rosemary is having what might be the worst nightmare of her life, one isn't quite sure of what is happening, and of course, in the end, when all is revealed in a comic yet horrific way. That takes skill in a storyteller and what makes ROSEMARY'S BABY so completely disturbing even now, almost forty years from its release unto the public. Also the fact that it never relies on a twist ending so common today but on the nuanced performance of the actors portraying real urbanites enhances: from Mia Farrow who carries the movie and even at the end retains a resigned innocence to her fate once her suspicions are facts to John Cassavettes who plays his part slimy straight, and supporting actors Ruth Gordon and Sydney Blackmer who have the hard task of making kindly and eccentric hide sinister just underneath. Their performance makes you wonder who exactly are your neighbors, and if they might be harboring some deadly lifestyle, and makes you feel uneasy being alone even in an empty hallway or accepting anyone's offered smoothie.