Apartment 7A review: This Rosemary’s Baby prequel falls flat

The one issues separating an impressed prequel from a silly one are a robust thought and a robust creative perspective. Apartment 7A doesn’t have both. It’s a prequel centered round a minor character from 1968’s Rosemary’s Child, Terry Gionoffrio (Ozark star Julia Garner), whose destiny is explicitly spelled out in that movie’s first act. That’s an issue in and of itself, and one which Condominium 7A solely addresses by hoping its viewers both haven’t seen its father or mother movie or, on the very least, don’t bear in mind the specifics of its plot. What’s even worse is how completely Condominium 7A misjudges the place the enduring, terrifying energy of Rosemary’s Child comes from.

Probably the most iconic American horror movies of all time, Rosemary’s Child isn’t “scary” per se — not within the fashionable or most simple sense of the phrase. It has little to no leap scares and only some really horrifying photographs, most of which come throughout the identical midpoint, hallucinatory sequence. Its horrors linger past the perimeters of its frames — hidden throughout the smiles of its heroine’s pushy neighbors, the shadows of its New York condo constructing, and behind literal veils. It’s a horror movie that tries for many of its runtime to by no means shove the nightmarish points of its story in your face. When it does, it typically does so with a darkly humorous contact that simply makes the really outlandish evil of its villains all of the extra startling.

Condominium 7A, conversely, can’t assist however present its hand. It’s a prequel comprised of static photographs and sharp cuts that forestall it from ever recreating the dreamlike maintain of its traditional predecessor. It’s much more literal and absurd, and but it lacks Rosemary Child‘s macabre humorousness. Condominium 7A, in different phrases, misses the mark by lacking the purpose.

When Condominium 7A begins, Garner’s Terry is a New York Metropolis dancer with goals of at some point seeing her identify up in lights. The movie, set in 1965, wastes no time dashing her goals. Its prologue swiftly ends with Terry injuring her ankle so badly that dancing turns into a bodily painful endeavor. This accident sends Terry down a spiral of denial and medicines that ends along with her being picked up off the sidewalk by Minnie (Dianne Wiest) and Roman Castevet (Kevin McNally), a seemingly kindly older couple. When Terry awakens from a drug-induced stupor, Minnie and Roman supply to let her keep within the condo they personal subsequent to theirs and reintroduce her to their Broadway producer neighbor, Alan (a wasted Jim Sturgess).

What appears at first like a welcome stroke of luck begins to really feel harmful after a one-on-one evening with Alan leaves Terry with bruises on her physique and more and more demonic visions. Minnie and Roman’s generosity, in flip, morphs into one thing extra nefarious, and it isn’t lengthy earlier than Terry has grown each afraid and suspicious of her neighbor’s secret (however not significantly well-hidden) plans for her. Those that have seen Rosemary’s Child will know all alongside what’s actually happening throughout the partitions of the Bramford, Condominium 7A‘s labyrinthine central constructing, and the prequel doesn’t do something to offset the predictability of its plot. As an alternative, it repeats almost the entire main dramatic beats of Rosemary’s Child, a incontrovertible fact that makes it really feel extra like a remake than a prequel proper up till the precise, last-minute second when it has to diverge from its predecessor.

Director Natalie Erika James and her co-writers, Christian White and Skylar James, make the error of overemphasizing the malevolence of the Bramford’s residents in a method that Rosemary’s Child pointedly doesn’t till its third act. Minnie, specifically, behaves in such an clearly sinister method for a lot of Condominium 7A that Dianne Wiest’s iteration of the character pales compared to the unlikely evil of Ruth Gordon’s, even if Wiest consciously and distractingly tries laborious to mimic Gordon’s accent and voice. Solely Garner, as gifted a younger actress as we now have proper now, manages to step out from the shadow of Rosemary’s Child and supply one thing new and worthwhile. Her Terry is extra blunt and determined than Mia Farrow’s Rosemary, and Garner does her greatest to play Condominium 7A‘s drama as earnestly and realistically as she will.

Whereas its determination to inform Terry’s story vastly restricts its freedom, Condominium 7A nonetheless stumbles upon concepts that really feel each distinctly tied to these on the coronary heart of its larger franchise and distinctive to it. In its father or mother movie, Farrow’s Rosemary is a girl who believes that these round her really see her as a human being. It’s solely on the finish that she discovers they view her and her physique as means to their very own ends, and it’s due to the unvarnished great thing about Farrow’s efficiency that we really feel simultaneous horror and heartbreak for her. Condominium 7A, in the meantime, makes use of Terry’s profession as a vessel to discover how the skilled goals of girls have lengthy been seen and utilized by these in energy — largely males — as bargaining chips or alternatives to use them.

That fact is made instantly clear to each the viewers and Garner’s Terry, although, which implies that Condominium 7A‘s confidently executed ending is rendered largely weightless. The prequel forgets simply how necessary the supporting characters of Rosemary’s Child are to its greatest moments, and it invests so little in them that their therapy of Terry doesn’t land as harshly because it ought to. The brand new movie is a trendy and, at occasions, genuinely scary prequel, however it says so little new that its existence is left unjustified.

Rosemary’s Child director Roman Polanski’s real-life actions have made appreciating the artistry of his early movies and his potential to spotlight the overwhelming nature of the world’s evil a troublesome act. Had it higher understood what makes Polanski’s 1968 movie so haunting, Condominium 7A might have emerged as a worthy various for these bored with grappling with its predecessor’s now-complicated legacy. However it unwisely tries to switch the delicate, strangling impact of Rosemary’s Child with a blunter type that’s considerably much less efficient. Its horrors are extra apparent, its concepts extra ham-fisted. It hits you within the face, however it doesn’t get below your pores and skin.

Condominium 7A is streaming now on Apple TV+.