Review of Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Moving picture, 137 minutes

Might have been better without spoilers, but it hasn’t aged all that well. It slowly lines up a lot of tropes—fear of social liberalization, secularization, melodramatic partner betrayal, body invasion etc.—but it does so too mechanically. The climax is a little dull, albeit admirable in its concretion and reintegration with “ordinary” life. Playing out more of the Todorovian angle up until then might have helped. At least the Castevets are brilliantly realized: measuredly suave Sidney Blackmer and disarmingly banal Ruth Gordon.

References here: Being John Malkovich (1999).

moving picture fiction