Timeless horror

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2009)

Roman Polanski arrived in America with 'Rosemary's Baby', a classic horror (about a woman who fears that a satanic cabal want to steal her as yet unborn child) that relies on no special effects but entirely on the mood of paranoia and suspense it manages to create. The idea of pregnancy as a time of special helplessness is skillfully exploited; the brilliance of the piece is that it avoids commitment as to whether anything supernatural is actually happening. In places, the 1960s-ness of it all makes it a bit hard to watch, but one really only notices this in the scenes that are filler; when the tension rises, the feeling is timeless. Mia Farrow does well as the eponymous ingénue, and while some of the other actors are more wooden (another fine director, John Cassavettes, plays her husband, yet his acting feels as if it belongs from the 50s not the 60s), but it doesn't really matter, so masterfully does Polanski turn the screw. It's an irony that Polanski's wife subsequently died at the hands of a cult; Polanski himself returned, much less convincingly, to Satanic themes with his lame movie of 'The Ninth Gate'.