APARTMENT 7A: An Unnecessary Prequel to “Rosemary’s Baby” [REVIEW]

“Hollywood’s lazy idiots can no longer come up with anything new. So, they keep making remakes and stretching out old ideas like a hen laying eggs, just to make some money off a proven title,” wrote Tomasz Beksiński in his last column. He might have had similar feelings watching “Apartment 7A”.

It’s 1965. Theresa “Terry” Gionoffrio arrives in New York from Nebraska with dreams of becoming a famous dancer. During a performance, she suffers a painful injury, preventing her from working on stage for several months. After her recovery, she begins attending auditions again and meets influential New York producer Alan Marchand at one of them. Determined to get a role in his musical at all costs, Terry follows him to the luxury apartment building Bramford, but she is stopped by the doorman. Once on the street, weakened by strong painkillers, Terry vomits and collapses on the sidewalk. Unexpectedly, other Bramford residents, Roman and Minnie Castevets, come to her aid. The kindly older couple takes Terry into their home for the night and, the next day, offers her a spacious apartment free of charge and arranges a meeting with Marchand at his apartment, during which Terry faints and experiences disturbing visions. Some time later, she learns that she is pregnant.

Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) is rightfully regarded as one of the best horror films in cinema history. Drawing from Ira Levin’s novel, Polanski crafted a multi-layered, unsettling work that can be interpreted both as a straightforward horror film about a satanic cult conspiracy and as an allegorical tale about fears surrounding motherhood or a study of paranoia and mental illness. The commercial and critical success of “Rosemary’s Baby” led to a surge of films with similar satanic themes—such as William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (1973), Richard Donner’s “The Omen” (1976), and Donald Cammell’s “The Devil’s Seed” (1977)—though none of these had the depth, intelligence, or power of the original. Likewise, productions directly referencing Levin’s novel and Polanski’s film, like the TV sequel “Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby” (1976) by Sam O’Steen and the miniseries “Rosemary’s Baby” (2014) by Agnieszka Holland, failed to capture the perfection of the original. “Apartment 7A” is another argument supporting this idea.

The film, written by Natalie Erika James, Christian White, and Skylar James, and directed by Natalie Erika James, is promoted as a prequel to “Rosemary’s Baby“. Technically, this is true, as “Apartment 7A” tells the story of a minor character from Polanski’s film—one of the Bramford tenants who briefly speaks with Rosemary in the laundry room before committing suicide by jumping out of the Castevets’ apartment window. The problem is that Terry’s story is eerily similar to Rosemary’s: she’s a vulnerable, lost girl in the big city, there’s a seemingly kind and helpful couple with sinister intentions, and there’s impregnation by the devil (?) and an unexpected pregnancy, followed by elements of a conspiracy aiming to bring the Antichrist into the world. Although Terry is unmarried, the role of Rosemary’s husband in Polanski’s film is taken on by Marchand in James’s film. This makes “Apartment 7A” more of a remake of “Rosemary’s Baby” than a prequel, with a hint of Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” (1977), borrowing the storyline of a dancer uncovering an occult conspiracy.

The screenplay follows predictable tropes, regularly losing rhythm, tension, and any real sense of threat along the way. “Apartment 7A” is a horror movie devoid of horror, anxiety, or even the atmosphere of paranoia that enveloped Rosemary. Everything here is clear and obvious from the start. In Polanski’s film, the Castevets initially appeared as harmless eccentrics, making the revelation that they were dangerous satanists all the more shocking for both Rosemary and the audience. For anyone familiar with “Rosemary’s Baby”, the true nature of the Castevets in James’s film will be no surprise. To avoid clichés, repetition, and derivation, the filmmakers could have focused the prequel on Roman and Minnie Castevets instead of a minor character—showing, for instance, how they became involved in occult practices and the role Roman’s father, the satanist Marcato (referred to in “Rosemary’s Baby” as a former Bramford resident), played in this.

“Apartment 7A” lacks the eerie ambiguity of “Rosemary’s Baby”. While Polanski’s script left open the possibility that the satanic plot was merely a figment of Rosemary’s imagination—perhaps a dream, hallucination, or symptom of mental illness—the script by James, White, and James leaves no room for doubt. The devil-worshipping conspiracy is real, and so is the devil himself (depicted in Terry’s vision in an unconvincing, non-threatening manner as a glitter-covered humanoid, more alien than Satan). This literalness is yet another nail in the coffin of this film. The over-the-top performance by Dianne Wiest, an otherwise excellent actress, as Minnie comes off as a caricature, a far cry from Ruth Gordon’s memorable portrayal in Polanski’s film. The only redeeming aspect of “Apartment 7A” is Julia Garner’s portrayal of Terry, as she manages to bring out as much as possible from an underdeveloped character. Yet even she cannot overcome the fact that “Apartment 7A” is a weak film—a prequel nobody asked for and nobody needed.