Rosemary's Baby Prequel 'Apartment 7A' Falls Flat
Roman Polanski’s 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby, based on the namesake 1967 novel by Ira Levin, is known for its haunting atmosphere and Satanic stylings that remain impactful today. Its success spawned several successors, including a 1976 TV film and a 2014 miniseries. With intellectual-property-driven content currently at an all-time high, Paramount Players has now produced a prequel; Enter, Apartment 7A, released on Paramount+ on September 27. The sophomore feature of director Natalie Erika James, the film is lushly produced and skillfully acted but largely looms in the shadow of its predecessor.
Julia Garner stars as Terry Gionoffrio, a dancer from Nebraska now working in New York City. In the original film, Terry briefly befriends Rosemary Woodhouse in the Bramford Apartments’ laundry room, introducing herself as a recovering addict and ward of Minne (Dianne Wiest) and Roman Castavet (Kevin McNally). Soon after, she is found dead, having jumped to her death from the Castavets’ apartment. Apartment 7A rewinds to before her first fateful meeting with the couple, opening with the performance in which Terry breaks an ankle mid-show and becomes known as ‘The Girl Who Fell.’ The injury prevents her from getting future roles, and she’s taunted during an audition for Broadway producer Alan Marchand (Jim Sturgess) when she’s asked to perform her crucial mistake over and over until her ankle begins to suffer. Desperate, she follows Alan to the Bramford apartment complex but becomes sick from drug withdrawals, after that the Castavets come across her and invite her in.
They're intensely hospitable and offer up their apartment down the hall for her to live in. They even set up a meeting for her with Alan, where she falls into a hallucination after having drinks, and wakes up the next morning presuming they have slept together. Soon, she finds out she's pregnant. From here on out things only get worse for Terry, and the film itself begins to falter.
Though technically a prequel, Apartment 7A is more of a remake. Terry encounters the same escalating suspicion and pangs of pain Rosemary was plagued with and juggles it with her performing aspirations. The lurking horror within her materializes as hallucinations. She spots a dead baby in the laundry room wash and sees a pair of hands wrapped around her stomach in the mirror. These moments of fear feel like cheap scares and don't enhance the overall tone – which is, largely, uneven. Terry's perspective guides the film, and we see her through moments of levity with her best friend Annie (Marli Siu), triumph in dance – as she eventually gets the role she longs for, through some dubious help – and gradual apprehension of the Castavets. The narrative effect is stilted. The frequent events are laid out to be as easily understood as possible, and the dialogue feels overly expositional and cliche. Paired with this is a reliance on imagery and themes from the original film, taming down their effect.
This is to say nothing of the talent of the actors; Garner and Wiest are undeniable standouts. When Terry gets a haircut mid-pregnancy, it is Minnie who gives it to her, the women exchanging dialogue as Minnie hacks away dangerously. She holds the knife and brandishes it with power. It's a tense scene buoyed by the strength of the actors playing it.
Julia Garner’s Terry is ambitious and confrontational from the start. She stands stark from Rosemary in this sense, surrounded by the freedoms Rosemary never had but lacking the security of a housewife’s life. Frequently, in the film, she draws boundaries. When Alan asks her to act like a pig in her first audition, she says “I’ll do just about anything for another shot, but I won’t humiliate myself.” Though unsubtle in its scripting, her tenacity is a refreshing take on the story. She is a deeply passionate artist and it’s her drawing to the spotlight and love of her performance that drives and ultimately dooms her.
The dance takes center in the story through beautiful choreography sequences, namely Terry's hallucination during her night with Alan. She limply careens through the hands of an ensemble of dancers on an Old-Hollywood-style stage, who fan out around her as she lies on a bed. Then a glittering, eerie depiction of the devil – the most frightening imagery of the film – crawls up the bed toward her before she abruptly wakes up. It is a both visually and thematically striking sequence, thanks to choreographers Ashley Wallen and Lukas Macfarlane.
The film’s final scene is the most arresting choreography of the film, and where Garner truly gets to shine. Terry commands the spotlight and exercises the agency that she has been forced to cede at different parts of the film. It’s a striking ending that is the film’s best moment and comes much too late. Terry is a compelling character whose complexity reflects the female perspective behind the camera. However, by retreading the same path as its narrative successor, the film eschews opportunities for truly daring takes on its source material.
