Poll Position: "Rosemary's Baby" (1968)

The first winner for our Undead Poll is “Rosemary’s Baby” by a good amount. And knowing only very little about this horrific thriller, it made it all the better. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Roman Polanski wrote and directed this. And from the impression I got from “The Pianist”, I sort of had high hopes for “Rosemary’s Baby”, but can you blame me? It is said to be Polanski’s masterpiece and is considered the first movie to start the psychological thriller genre. Whatever the case, this is what I thought of the cult classic.

The movie centralizes on Rosemary and her husband Guy Woodhouse. They find a new apartment to live in, ignoring all the rumours that it’s a cursed building. The two move in and start to plan out their lives. As they become friendly with their neighbours, they meet Roman and Minnie Castevet. They are an elderly couple with all the free time and are very nice to Guy and Rosemary. As the couple try for a child, Rosemary has a strange dream and wakes up feeling weird. After a quick check up from the doctor, Rosemary finds out she is pregnant and is expecting to deliver on the 6^th month of ‘66 but doesn’t remember how she got pregnant. As Guy starts to spend more time away and his career as an actor becomes more successful, Rosemary has to start dealing with the labour pains and her paranoia. She suspects her pregnancy isn’t a normal one and feels her neighbours are out to get her child. Is she going insane or are her suspicions correct?

Mia Farrow stole the limelight.

To begin, the story is probably the most original story I’ve heard up to date. And this might be the earliest movie I’ve seen that deals with the dark themes it deals with. I also hope I’m not spoiling too much of the movie, but I’ve never seen a movie deal with Satanic rituals like I have with “Rosemary’s Baby”. But here is the best part, this entire wacky story is told in the most believable fashion. At not one moment was I calling shenanigans. Well, all up until the end when the movie makes a hard left and steers off the cliff of sanity. I find this to be the true essence of the movie; its down to Earth feel. It doesn’t feel all that supernatural and hokey pokey to me.

Second I would like to bring up the role of Rosemary Woodhouse, which was play by Mia Farrow. To this day, this has to be my favourite female character/role. Again, the key point is to keep the character realistic and entirely believable. Farrow never takes her role too far that it is over exaggerated. She smoothly transitions as an innocent young wife, to a frail and sick mother-to-be, and lastly into a deep paranoia. It is fantastic to watch her progress through her three stages.

Can you ever trust old people?

Another aspect the movie captured was the mystery. Early on in the movie the audience knows why Rosemary is going slightly insane. And during the first part of the movie, I was putting aside the reasoning why she was going nuts. But as the movie went on, that subtle poke that maybe she was right grew stronger and stronger. By the end of the movie, I wasn’t sure what to believe. Was Rosemary going crazy, or was her paranoia justified? And this was all because the movie does such a good job of balancing out the rational for both sides. All of this seems rational and makes sense.

Never mess with a mother and her child.

Now this is definitely a spoiler, so skip this if you haven’t seen the film. Now the creepiest scene is when Rosemary is being raped by a monster, who we later find out is Lucifer himself. To see the satanic ritual being performed by 30 odd naked people, and covering Rosemary’s body in blood was damn creepy. I’m still having horrific thoughts of Satan’s claw running down Rosemary’s body.

To sum it all up, this movie was a pleasant surprise in respect that I didn’t expect this movie to creep me out the way that it did. It wasn’t surprising how great this movie was, knowing that Roman Polanski was the brains of the operation. There is almost nothing to dislike about it. We have a great actress who steals the show in my eyes, the story is original and creepy all in the same time, and the movie got into my head and rooted me into this weird and dark atmosphere. Truly that is all I ask for in a horror movie during October. By far one of the creepiest movies I’ve seen all year.