One of the Best

Rating: 10/10 (16 November 2010)

Rosemary's Baby is one of the best horror movies of all time.
Whenever I say this to someone I'm often barraged by a flurry of "What?! How!? Why?! But it's not even scary! Rosemary's Baby is not a horror film! There's like barely any blood! The movie doesn't even have an on-screen death!" (If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that Hell hath no fury like a contradicted, overly invested genre-lover.)
Rosemary's Baby was not just a jolt to the horror genre upon its initial release, but it permeated popular culture in a way not seen since Psycho eight years earlier. Based on the 1967 Ira Levin novel of the same name, Rosemary's Baby is an almost verbatim recreation of its source text. Ira Levin was also the man behind The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil, so something tells me Mr. Levin had a thing for conspiracy theories.
In Rosemary's Baby the conspiracy's ringleader is supposedly none other than Satan himself, out to plant his anti-Christ seed into a ripe field, i.e. the as-of-yet-unused womb of some docile, domestic, husband-trusting, innocent-enough, almost ex-Catholic girl. Rosemary Woodhouse is the lady in question. Her husband, Guy, may or may not have sold her drugged-up body one night to the maybe-Satanic Castevets, the neighbors with whom the Woodhouse's share a wall, in order for her to be raped by the Devil and become a vessel for said demon seed (or was Rosemary just having a bad dream that night?) You see, Guy's a struggling actor, so you know he'd sell his soul in a heartbeat for success, so what's his wife's womb to him, right? After all, Guy is getting pretty chummy with those nosy, old, childless Castevets. Their chanting and flute-playing coming from next door, their nomadic, theatrical background, and those scathing remarks against the Pope – something just isn't right with the Castevets.
Rosemary soon finds herself pregnant (but with whose baby?), cut-off from her young friends (associating only with the Castevets and their sect of elders), and getting rather unorthodox Ob-Gyn treatment from a Dr. Abraham Sapirstein (raw egg & fresh herb smoothies constitute Rosemary's diet under his care, also something called Tanas Roothmmm, what's THAT an anagram for I wonder?) Her first trimester is nothing but pain, weight loss, anemia, vomiting, and a fondness for raw liver (yuck!) And those who come in contact with her from outside 'the group' often meet bad ends. Poor Rosemary. Is there a plot against her baby? Or is it all being done FOR the baby?
With every viewing (and there have been scores of them), I see a little more, hear a little more, and understand a little more – continually revealing itself and affecting me anew like any great work of art should. I guess one could call Rosemary's Baby the horror movie that keeps on giving. All the acting is excellent too, especially, of course, the Oscar-winning performance by Ruth Gordon as the meddlesome minion of Satan, Minnie Castevet. Even Mia Farrow, whom I normally don't equate with great acting, except Broadway Danny Rose, actually holds her own in scenes with the indomitable John Cassavetes. Her finest moment in the film, if not in her whole career, is arguably the phone booth scene.
Rosemary's Baby is an extraordinary picture in that it conveys so much information, it illustrates so much of its motive, and makes privy its truths long before Rosemary knows them herself, but yet somehow it can fill a viewer with constant and complete suspense. And Rosemary's predicament isn't exactly something new in the realm of storytelling; in fact it's formulaic in many ways. When you go into a film knowing it's supposed to be horrific, but are not given any strong shocks or scares for almost the first hour – that alone creates tension to me. But it is this particular fact about Rosemary's Baby that makes many question its 'horror movie' standing.
So what makes a horror movie then? Is it any film whose plot attempts to elicit fright, fear or terror from its audience? Or does a horror film just need to have actual scares – something that'll make you jump in your seat, or at least make you squirmy? Does a horror movie have to be a symphony of blood, gore, constant score, and speed-of-light editing these days, a 'gruesical' if you will? Has genre, if not the entire definition of what makes a "good" movie, been kidnapped by technique? Less than three second shot lengths are the mean for a horror film today. Faster and faster pacing. Build-up. Viscera! The visceral. Splatter! Build-up. Gore! Build-up. Murder! Build-up. Big Splatter! Conclusion. One more scare! Lights up. Yawn.
The time when Rosemary's Baby is seen as a genuine horror movie might be dead, but is that our loss? Yes. Most often, I hear Rosemary's Baby referred to as not a horror film, but rather a suspense film, and that any horror it may contain is strictly psychological, and therefore not truly scary. All I know is that Poe, Henry James, Lovecraft, de Maupassant, and Jacques Tourneur are the real forefathers of Rosemary's Baby, not Universal Monsters, Hammer Horror's bat-bitten boobies, Corman's explicitness or H.G. Lewis' gore. I believe what has come to be called "psychological-horror", is in fact the purest form of horror - a majority of violence, blood, gore, and brutality does not a horror movie make.
The autonomy created by city living transformed into a nightmarish, hell-on-earth conspiracy scenario is as relevant today as 1968, if not more so. The daily questioning of one's sanity. To find yourself constantly analyzing the motivations of others. Suspicion towards a loved one. To feel completely isolated and alone, yet surrounded by millions. Immersing myself into these ideas for 136 minutes is far scarier to me than any of the zombies, slashers, torturers or mutants of today.