Apartment 7A

Apartment 7A continues the trend of famous horror franchises getting prequel films to show what led to the events of everybody’s favorite scary stories. Whether it was seeing how the crazed cannibal family in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre started their slaughtering, highlighting how the twisted mother/son relationship for Norman Bates formed in Psycho 2, discovering the origins of the xenomorphs in Prometheus, or getting the backstory behind the titular creepy haunted doll in Annabelle 2, horror movie prequels are surprisingly prevalent, but rarely are they actually good. While some can provide insight and context, they usually remove the appealing ambiguity of a horrifying scenario and give answers to questions people weren’t asking for, so with this idea in mind, the prospect of Rosemary’s Baby of all films getting one seemed preposterous, and yet in 2024, audiences received one and were forced to justify its existence.

Set in 1965 New York City, an aspiring dancer named Terry Gionoffrio (played by Julia Garner) is struggling to get back into the dance halls after experiencing a severe foot injury that hampered her career and makes every talent agent view her as ‘’damaged goods’’. Hoping to get a part in an upcoming production led by famed Broadway producer, Alan Marchand (played by Jim Sturgess), Terry finds herself meeting Minnie and Roman Castevet (played by Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally), an elderly couple living in the same apartment complex as Marchand, and upon meeting Terry, decide to let her rent out Apartment 7A on their floor to improve her chances of talking with the producer. After delightfully agreeing, Terry miraculously starts to get everything she asked for, including a lead part in Marchand’s show after the former star suffers a sporadic injury, but this spout of luck causes her to suspect her new neighbors, who always seem to be around. Getting flashes of a past night with Marchand that seemingly got her pregnant, the conspiracy surrounding these good coincidences start to pile up, forcing Terry to realize exactly what they want from her in more than just a physical sense.

Released by Paramount (who also released the original film) and sent straight to their streaming platform, Paramount+, Apartment 7A doesn’t in any way live up to its predecessor and barely justifies its purpose, as it offers very little to newcomer audiences and doesn’t do any service to the original 1967 novel or the 1968 movie, only hanging on due to competent direction, strong performances and a harmlessly quick pacing.

The original 1968 movie directed by Roman Polanski has fairly confused retrospective reviews, as many critics were impressed by the film’s striking elements but were overall unsure of how to probably gage it. With the passage of time, the film has grown to be a classic and is even viewed as one of the greatest horror films ever made, exploring themes of domesticity, motherhood, mental illness, the gaslighting placed onto women in order to retain a sense of control over someone’s self without permission, and the lengths someone is willing to go for the allure of fame (even at the expense of other people). It was a slow-burn, had dramatically gripping performances, and was more so unsettling in its ideas and cryptic in its presentation rather than a shout fest from beginning to end, so the idea of trying to replicate that kind of identity in a modern lens (which is particularly ridiculous since the film is very much a product of the 60s) doesn’t sound like the smartest choice, especially because the story existed quite contently as a singular narrative and didn’t require a background check. One element that made things both better and worst for the project was the knowledge that John Krasinski (who became popular in the horror space for his involvement with A Quiet Place) would be acting as a producer alongside fellow Quiet Place producers, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, and Michael Bay.

While this might look good on the outside, those movies are much more mainstream, popcorn horror flicks that don’t think outside the box and go for something more clean-cut and heart-tugging, whereas Rosemary’s Baby has a cerebral and provocative quality to it that these individuals sadly don’t have the pedigree to emulate, which is plain to see when watching this prequel film. It isn’t poorly delivered, and you can sense that it’s trying to replicate qualities of the original from the acting choices, heavier focus on atmosphere, and even a few visual cues, but the feel is entirely off and because the film is intentionally set in the same world as the 1960s film, you can’t help but compare it. It is thankfully quite short and the directing by Natalie Erika James is decent enough that you’re willing to see where it goes, but the real problem is that the script written by James, Christian White and Skylar James (who also created the story) isn’t very good. The dialogue is predictable and safe, the character dilemmas are underdeveloped and annoyingly lazy, the scares and uncomfortable moments are very repetitive of other horror flicks, and while there could be an idea here with better direction and attention, it isn’t present in this final release.

The original film was able to subtly play out as it did thanks to the lead character being a domesticated married woman, as it allowed something like traditional pregnancy to be easily twisted into something more warped and horrifying without giving away what was actually going on. The prequel runs into a hurdle however, as its lead is a single, working woman, making it quite obvious the shadiness of the situation when she suddenly gets pregnant through what looks like a ritualistic ceremony. The idea of focusing on a career woman this time around could be interesting, and maybe with a better tooled script, it could’ve explored a different side to the situation by showing a person who’s willing to be seduced by the cult as a means of getting what she wants (like getting a first-person look at what the husband from the original film did), but Terry is a very straightforward troubled, but kind lead who doesn’t have any complexities to her. You can guess what every character is going to be and offer due to the acting being a lot more in-your-face and caricature-like, as opposed to the first film where while played up to an extent, felt more like real people (just with a theatrical side to them that could’ve been explained away as just sheltered awkwardness).

With that said, the acting is much better than expected, mainly due to the kind of people that they got to play these characters. While people like Kevin McNally and Marli Siu are mostly kept in the background and Jim Sturgess does struggle with some painfully on-the-nose dialogue that makes his character annoyingly generic, Julia Garner and Dianne Wiest are very strong as the two leads. Garner has proven her capabilities previously through her award-winning performance as Ruth in Ozark, and she manages to shine pretty nicely in what is otherwise a very generic character. You can map out everything that’s going to happen to her, how she’s going to react to everything, and even how her story is going to end (people probably won’t even remember that her character is actually in the original film), but Garner is a magnetic performer that puts a lot into whatever she’s given, and here is no different. Similarly, Dianne Wiest is an actress known for playing these sunny, almost quirkily chirper mother figures, and the choice to take that persona and make it threatening was a great decision on her part and the casting directing, Kharmel Cochrane. Her performance is definitely more in-your-face and showier than Ruth Gordon, who was a lot more subtle and deceptively threatening, but it’s still a good performance regardless.

For a film that doesn’t have a giant budget and was streaming exclusive, it both does and doesn’t look like it matches that status, with visuals that are small in scale and not overly flashy but features enough odd flourishes that makes it feel like it’s trying its best. The first film didn’t require any grand visuals either and relied on inferring or vaguely showing the threat rather than outwardly displaying it, letting the unknown factor take command and leave the mind free rein to create whatever horrific creations it could imagine. This film follows the same trend and doesn’t fully show most of the horrors behind the veil (although it does get close which makes it not nearly as effective), but even with this idea of building suspense rather than building fear, the movie fails at this because it just isn’t scary.

Either due to knowing everything that’s going to happen since the plot feels almost identical to the original, or that any of the scary imagery isn’t outwardly or inwardly terrifying enough to get a noticeable reaction, it simply feels like a standard horror film of the time without many surprises. It does have a few nice shots from director of photography, Arnau Valls Colomer, that works its hardest to bring some cinematic flair, which it occasionally does through some of the wider-angle shots of the hotel and even a few times during a performance where the sets and camera work are pretty expansive, but even that angle isn’t handled right. The idea of incorporating musical theatre into this story and how you could visualize some of the narrative in a way that is both on-the-nose, but also contextual is pretty smart and it feels like it’s starting to do that with how they portray the ‘’ritual’’ scene, but it never really develops into anything and just feels like a background ingredient not given proper attention.

Apartment 7A would need to fight to prove it was even a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby due to how its titled and its quiet placement on streaming, and maybe since the film really is only passably mediocre, that’s probably for the best. Ironically, it doesn’t feel like this film is hampered by bad talent as most of the people involved feel like they have an understanding and awareness of horror and how to structure a film, so it would be interesting to see most of them go onto different work, but since it’s trying to emulate a style that was very specific to a genre and time period, it just wasn’t going to measure up. Much like how movies like The Exorcist and The Shining didn’t need follow ups and had sequels that subsequently flew under the radar due to feeling drastically different from their predecessors, Rosemary’s Baby didn’t require one either, and adequate direction, decent visual design and pretty good acting, is not good enough to salvage a weak script and pointless story. Watching this movie won’t be bothersome in any way, but it won’t give anything that shocking either.