Call the super. This unit needs repairs. Apartment 7A, like most prequels, sequels, companion volumes and remakes, is there for the enhancement of a way better work. That would be Rosemary’s Baby, the bone chilling 1968 masterpiece by Roman Polanski (Chinatown) starring Mia Farrow (The Great Gatsby) who was an actress then. You see, it was some time when movies such as one centered on a girl exposed to a horrible conspiracy to make her the mother of Antichrist were bestsellers and hardly any other offer comparable to the physical upheavals they caused. It’s rather brazen to suggest that audiences have not encountered such a remainder since Psycho released in 1960 let alone having been subjected to such an evil tinged discussable story. Unless, of course, they read the bestseller, Rosemary’s Baby and Ira Levin’s novel.
Here, Julia Garner plays the ambitious young dancer Terry Gionoffrio, a minor character in the storyline of the original film, who pursues fame and success in the New York, but after a tragic accident her plans take a smart turn. When a rich older couple (Dianne Wiest, Kevin McNally) let her stay with them in their luxurious apartment within the Bramford building, Terry thinks she is well taken care of.
She’s not. Much like events in the original film, Terry lives through a night for which she has no real assurance. For all who have watched the original, the answer is already at the back of the book – she has been cusped to be sure, a baby mama for satan. One of the reasons for such expansion of character is to give contemporary viewers what can be termed as a Rosemary’s Baby experience. It cannot be helped that Apartment 7A has even more of this intrigue and far better and memorable turns from Julia Garner (Ozark) and Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway). However, it never taps into terror, relagates itself to too much romance and fails to the original in a sense of religious horror as of sorts. These fine actors keep it propped up, and it most definitely deserves a visit, Though this is a very good movie. It reaches the climax finally and then the intrigue is gone, the movie flops.
So how did we end up here, that may take a refresher on Paramount Pictures, which owns this production. Also a very skillful, the late Robert Evans became head of the studio in June 1967 due to the fact that the company was rapidly fading and had to undergo restructuring. He did that starting with Rosemary’s Baby. The film has achieved great commercial success and cultural significance.
Love Story, The Godfather, and Chinatown are only three of the many films that reinforced Paramount’s prominence in the 1970s. He left the position as the head of the studio in 1974 to engage in producing films of his own, however by that time, he had already established a new direction for the company. But the studio also produced legendary films such as Grease 2, American Gigolo, Flashdance, Top Gun, Ordinary People, The Elephant Man, Raiders of the Last Arc, Mission: Impossible. And more.
Fast For today’s timeline and there is Paramount+, who seems to think that moving towards loyal audiences is possible as long as past glories can be revisited once in a while. Once in a while we will receive something great, such as The Offer, with Miles Teller and Matthew Goode as Robert Evans in a limited series on how The Godfather was made. Usually, we like whatever is Star Trek related and stay away from things like Fatal Attraction, a pretty bland contemporary American thriller remake. But I I like Apartment 7A which is a bit of step up and has best bits here and there, especially from Garner and Wiest, as well as director/writer Natalie Erika James (Relic), who brings a few unexpected developments to the narrative and the storytelling, but never amuses with suspenseful scares.
It all seems very nice on paper to reexamine Terry’s character. She only had a ‘fleeting’ scene with Rosemary in the original movie, after all, telling Rosemary that her and others such neighbors the original Castevets had – played by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer – were good fellows. However, on one occasion when Rosemary and her husband, John Cassavetes, come back to Bramford, they find out shocking facts about Terry and the eighth apartment outlines this character’s arc. Another character who is also living in the apparatus is Alan Jim Sturgess, a Broadway producer who gives Terry one more chance to shoot her way to the top. That’s all she desires, you see and the parts that show Terry’s horrible injury, which happened on stage and later on, the healer parts are all well cut and are somewhat interesting because we are made aware of how far Terry is willing to go in order to have her dreams come true. Musicals have provided the motion picture director in question with several smart clichés. This is the point at which terry is half asleep and half woken. Still wonderful as they are – for these images are of terry’s shatterered mirror image mind – it would have been even more pleasant to the audiences if we were hit with more apprehension duration the show than we did.
The last one-third of the film, of course is filled with the culminating action. While Terry is beginning to remember who her neighbors actually are, it always provides good fun watching Garner and Wiest, who attempt to scheme against each other. If we were to recognize all of Jessica’s close to the girl scar tissues and wrinkles, it would be harder to do than provide this actress with a character who wouldn’t wear out much humor.
Unfortunately for himself, Dianne Wiest has other ideas. It is very tough to better the performance of Ruth Gordon as Minnie Lodge but Wiest makes the best of it and adds more layers of this camouflaged character than expected. Then, among the cast that has potential, however a bit uneven, there is Marli Siu from everything I know about love as Terry’s supportive friend, Andrew Buchan as well.
Certainly, there is no doubt that John Krasinski (A Quiet Place) is one of the producers of Apartment 7A, and this apartment seeks to bring Terry to yet another generation of audiences. While there appeared in your mind’s eye more butt, the book I found it rather impossible to pass has — the female oppression, which seems quite topical even today — the satanic cults, and the frenetic intrigue of a posh forsaken apartment on Upper West Side. Apartment 7A cannot be considered the apogee of creativity, and is, in a way, less shocking than a regular sixties baby horror. More often than not, in this day and age, there is an expectation that something more spectacular should be done. We’ve been fed on high-octane distraction in the form of spoofy superhero flicks and desensitized to the sound bites of social media. It’s more simply harder to engage the viewer’s attention.
Of course, if that plays over the road and a few barriers from Apartment 7A, there’s no reason to say that you have to keep yourself outside the door and not walk in. Just the performances are worth seeing. The horror, suspense, and shock? Not quite.
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