A talented cast and Natalie Erika James’s capable direction can’t salvage Apartment 7A when it has nothing new or interesting to say.
Paramount’s latest horror film Apartment 7A is the studio’s attempt to turn 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby into a bankable franchise. Again. Well… again again.
Did you know there was a sequel to Rosemary’s Baby? It’s true! In 1976 (more than two decades before Ira Levin wrote a sequel to his original novel) the first film’s editor Sam O’Steen took to the director’s chair for Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby. The sequel followed the adventures of Rosemary’s son Adrian, now a thirty-something layabout who never quite got around to being the Antichrist. Only one member of the original cast returned and the very few people who saw the film said it was terrible.
From there the series has bounced from one development hell to another. Paramount was so impressed with the 3D effects in Friday the 13th Part III they asked series producer Frank Mancuso Jr. to update Rosemary and co. in the same vein. Michael Bay, who built his producing career around reboots of horror classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street, was at one time attached to a reboot.
Why now?
This is all to say that Paramount finally releasing a new Rosemary’s Baby title elicits an exasperate cry of “It’s about time!” But it also raises the question of “Why now?” It’s a question with many potentially satisfying answers. Maddeningly, Apartment 7A never manages a single one.
The film centers on Terry Gionoffrio (Julia Garner), an aspiring Broadway performer struggling in the aftermath of a potentially career-ending injury. Terry, originally played by Victoria Vetri, memorably showed up in one of Rosemary’s Baby‘s opening scenes to lavish praise upon the films villains only to then leap to her death from the roof of the apartment building. It’s a bleak choice for a prequel protagonist. And considering the studio is memorializing that final act on Apartment 7A‘s poster, Paramount is sticking with the bleakness.
When older couple Minnie and Roman Castevet (Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally, replacing Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer from the original) witness a struggling Terry collapse on the street, they take her in. Their support includes free housing (the titular apartment) and career help via encouraging Broadway producer and neighbor Alan Marchand (Jim Sturgess) to cast her in his new show. But when Terry becomes pregnant by suspicious means, she starts to think there may be a more sinister motivation behind the Castavets’ actions.
A bad movie that deserves to be better.
Anyone who has seen Rosemary’s Baby will find Apartment 7A familiar. Both because the protagonist’s actions are careening towards an end they’ve already seen and because… well, Apartment 7A is more or less a remake of Rosemary’s Baby. The misfortune that follows Garner’s Terry mirrors what Mia Farrow’s Rosemary experienced in the original film. Both women face impregnation through sexual assault. Both women suffer the fate of the woman the Castevets had previously doted on. Even Terry’s growing Broadway success under the Castevets’ mentorship pretty closely follows the burgeoning film career of Rosemary’s husband Guy. The terror offers nothing novel or unique.
At the same time, this new film is so dependent on its predecessor that newcomers will likely find themselves utterly confused by many of the film’s events. But despite that, somehow, the two films share zero continuity regarding the Terry character. This film is difficult to enjoy as a standalone work yet equally difficult to enjoy as a companion piece. Paramount has managed a truly paradoxical franchise experience.
This isn’t even beginning to touch the film’s clumsy handling of sexual violence. To be clear, neither Natalie Erika James (Relic) nor any other woman filmmaker working today has an obligation to tackle themes of misogyny or violence against women in their work. And the clumsy execution here reeks more of studio sanitation than an actual creative decision. But Apartment 7A, like Rosemary’s Baby, is at its heart a story about sexual violence. And Rosemary’s Baby, despite being a half-century old and made by a man whose own sex crimes will forever taint the film’s legacy, confronts the horror of its protagonist’s rape in a potent way. Apartment 7A is largely content to brush it aside and focus on other, more cinematic threats. In a post-MeToo Hollywood, a better handling of this portion of the film’s themes should have been assumed.
The bottom line.
All of this a shame, because Apartment 7A so obviously deserves to be better. Garner and Wiest give truly outstanding performances. Director Natalie Erika James excels at crafting the film’s sinister tone and 1960s period aesthetic. And the supporting cast, especially Marli Siu, are perfectly entertaining. If the film had a more coherent point or was more willing to stand apart from its predecessor, it could have been something truly special. But, like its doomed protagonist, it just keeps stumbling under the spotlight.
Apartment 7A is now streaming on Paramount+. You can watch the trailer here.
Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures. You can read more articles by Brogan Luke Bouwhuis here.
REVIEW RATING
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Apartment 7A - 4/10
4/10
Brogan is a Salt Lake City-based writer and film festival programmer who has watched more Scooby-Doo than the majority of the human population. You can find him on social media at @roboteatsdino or at roboteatsdinosaur.com
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