New York City, 1965. A young dancer injures herself during a performance and is promptly blacklisted from future opportunities. Unable to pay her rent, she accepts an elderly couple's kind offer to come stay in their spare room at the ominous Bramford Apartment. The other tenants also get involved in her life, yadda yadda yadda, suddenly she feels her belly start growing.
In case it hasn't become clear yet (and the poster above didn't tip you off), this is the prequel to Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968). This one had lofty shoes to fill, but it feels too distinctly glossy and modern to build up the necessary dread and creepy atmosphere. Since we already know everything that's coming, there are very few surprises, and it doesn't do anything to stand out on its own. The lead performances are strong, but unfortunately, it fails to make an impact like the original.
2 tannis roots out of 5
I recognised the poster reference instantly, but figured it was just a reference. I should've known better. On the same page as The Omen and The Exorcist cash-ins, too... It's the year of the shit-quel.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to figure out what cultural shift/phenomenon led to all of these legacy prequels/sequels being released in such a short successive time period. (Was it the whole Roe v. Wade being overturned?) Seems like more than a coincidence. Perhaps this is an omen in itself?
ReplyDeleteI gotta admit though, that poster is pretty cool and raises your expectations highly. The question now is, do these three disparate Rosemary's Baby films form a "trilogy"?
Wiki classes them as a franchise, if that's any help. It mentions a 2014 TV miniseries, too, which I didn't know about.
ReplyDeleteYep, I should add that to the Remakes collection. I saw it at the time, but don't remember much about it, other than Zoe Saldana was in it. This movie actually did a better job of capturing some of the dread from the original; it was just completely pointless.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'll have to turn Rosemary's Baby into a trilogy, just for shits and giggles.