Many have tried and failed to replicate the genre-shifting success of Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby,” undeniably one of the most important horror films of all time. Not only was there a TV sequel and TV remake (with Zoe Saldaña!), but the DNA of that film is embedded through ones that play every year down here at Fantastic Fest, the country’s most elite horror festival. And so, Natalie Erika James’s “Apartment 7A” enters into a massive shadow, one notably bigger than the excellent “The First Omen” from earlier this year, another film that ends where a horror hit begins. However, where that film broke away from “The Omen” to find its own fearless identity, “Apartment 7A” seems afraid to stray too far from Mommy, justifying its existence through the sheer power of the great Julia Garner’s skill level, but leaving little else to recommend it.
The Emmy winner for “Ozark” stars as Terry Gionoffrio, who fans of Polanski’s film will remember from early in the saga of poor Rosemary Woodhouse, who meets Terry in the creepy basement of the Bramford, only to see her bloodied body on the sidewalk shortly thereafter. James takes this minor character from “Rosemary’s Baby” and imagines her final weeks, charting the arc of the woman that the Evil Powers That Be of New York City tried to turn into the mother of the antichrist before Rosemary.
Terry is a dancer in 1965 who suffers a horrible on-stage accident, leaving her cautious and uncertain about her future. An early scene in which she auditions for a show is one of the film’s best as the play’s director forces her over and over again to repeat the move that injured her, even as it induces more and more obvious pain. The show’s producer (Jim Sturgess) is intrigued by this fearless young woman, likely because he can quite literally see her tolerance for the physically brutal. She’s really auditioning for a very different job. Because, of course, he’s the mastermind behind the infamous scheme from the Ira Levin book and Polanski film: to impregnate a woman to bring forth the end of the world.
After going to his apartment building, Terry collapses, taken in by the Castevets, played here by Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally. The latter does a relatively subdued take on Roman, but the Oscar-winning Wiest goes ALL IN on Minnie, clearly attempting something of a Ruth Gordon impression but missing the mark. It makes sense to pay homage to an Oscar-winning performance, but Gordon’s tone felt natural, whereas Wiest comes off like a parody of an exaggerated New Yorker. I was reminded of George Costanza’s mom more than once.
Of course, everyone knows that the kindly Castevets are secretly part of a cult in the Bramford and that poor Terry is their latest target. While “Apartment 7A” plays a bit with the canon of its source, the truth is that we know Terry’s fate, which casts a cloud of doom over the entire proceeding. Garner does her best to break out of this fog, but she’s not helped by a production that forgets key elements of what worked about the original, including, most of all, setting. Watch just the opening scene of “Rosemary’s Baby” and witness the way Polanski used this well-known space in a manner that was foreboding and familiar at the same time. There’s no personality to the production design here. It’s just a set.
And “Apartment 7A” is nowhere near thematically rich enough either, losing the gaslighting element of Rosemary’s marriage in the source and not replacing it with really anything at all. Is this a tale of a performer who goes too far? It could easily have been a study in obsession—“Rosemary’s Baby” meets “Black Swan.” I’d watch that movie, but Terry’s identity as a dancer feels like it exists just to give “Apartment 7A” a narrative skeleton, not for any interesting thematic digging.
And yet in all of this forgettable filmmaking, there’s Julia Garner, doing SO much with so little. She’s constantly making smart choices with body language and dialogue, staying riveting through the entire film all the way up to her wonderful final beat. There’s a certain irony that a film about an artist who is pushed to her breaking point and used for little more than her body would ultimately be solely a showcase for a performer itself.
This review was filed from the world premiere at Fantastic Fest. It premieres on Paramount+ on September 27th.
