By: Brandon Wolfe
Remakes of classic horror films are always a dicey game. Stick too close to the source material and the whole endeavor feels pointless, but stray too far and you rankle purists, most of whom probably already have it out for you in the first place. For there is a reason these films are held in such high regard and the hubris required for someone to decide that there is room for improvement almost feels a little offensive, if not like outright heresy. It’s a nearly impossible needle to thread successfully. Zack Snyder’s remake of ‘Dawn of the Dead’ is the only example that immediately springs to mind as an attempt that has worked. That film borrowed just the core premise of people holing up in a mall from zombies outside, but otherwise went its own way, finding its own unique energy. Rare is the horror remake that bothers to go off-book like that and carve out its own identity. Most are content to regurgitate what we’ve already seen, to hugely diminished effect.
NBC’s ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ definitely falls into that latter category. Like many remakes, it serves us up the same story with mostly cosmetic changes. In this version, Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse are taking up residence in Paris rather than New York. Guy is now a struggling writer instead of an actor, and he and Rosemary have already endured an unsuccessful attempt at bearing a child. After retrieving her stolen purse in a snatch-and-grab attempt, Rosemary comes into possession of a wallet, stolen by the same thief, of Margo Castevet, a wealthy French socialite. Upon returning the wallet, Margo invites Rosemary to a party thrown by Margo and her husband, Roman. The Castevets immediately take a shine to the Woodhouses, and draw them in even closer when a mysterious fire destroys Rosemary and Guy’s modest apartment and the Castevets offer them a much fancier replacement at almost no cost, complete with a brand-new, perfectly fitting wardrobe in the closet.
Eventually Rosemary learns that a pregnant woman leapt to her death from the window of this new apartment a few months prior. She also discovers from a priest that the building is supposed to be cursed, and that witchcraft and cannibalistic rituals have been performed there, led by a man named Steven Marcato, whom some suspected may have been the devil himself. While Guy’s stalled writing career miraculously begins to soar, Rosemary experiences disturbing visions and dreams. And once she and Guy make the decision (strongly influenced by the Castevets) to try again to start a family, Rosemary, while doing the deed with Guy, begins to see the demonic Marcato as her partner, prompting her to deliver that famous line, “This isn’t a dream, this is real.”
All of the power of the original film is absent from this remake. Roman Polanski’s 1968 film was fueled by paranoia and looming dread. Polanski allowed the events to unfold gradually so that we didn’t quite know exactly what was going on, but picked up constantly mounting hints that something was amiss. The film stuck us completely in Rosemary’s point of view, so that we never knew anything more than she did. We were left to deduce, along with her, why her nosy neighbors were taking such a controlling interest in her impending motherhood, why her husband was suddenly acting like a furtive stranger and why her respected obstetrician was telling her that horrible, constant pain is perfectly normal with pregnancies. The film allowed the walls to keep closing in on Rosemary, and by extension us, to the point where it was suffocating. And this is before we found out just what the story was with the baby inside of her.
This new ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ doesn’t build that same air of claustrophobia and loss of power. There is too much ominous foreshadowing here, too much added gore and would-be unsettling imagery. Where the original put into play a sort of slow, creeping horror, this one can’t wait to announce as soon and as often as possible that it is a horror story. And some of its other tweaks rob it of the impact that the original enjoyed. There is no sense in these first two hours that Guy is involved with the Castevets as part of a handshake deal to further his career at the expense of his wife and unborn child, and that element in the original, that the one person Rosemary should be able to trust more than anyone is an active participant in her horrific ordeal, made the situation feel that much more hopeless. The change of the Castevets from the pushy old buzzards next door to a younger, wealthier European power couple tips the scale in a much more obvious direction. You would never suspect the seventysomething busybody next door to be a Satanist, but impossibly rich Eurotrash? You expect them to be evil creeps as a reflex, even without the devil entering into it. And speaking of the devil, him being represented here in the form of Marcato costs the film its most horrific punch. Rosemary finding herself making love to some sinister-looking bearded man is a huge step down from watching her do it with the huge, clawed monster with inhuman eyes that we glimpsed in Polanski’s film.
But arguably the most consequential change is Rosemary herself. Mia Farrow, with her waif-like figure and naïve, innocent demeanor, seemed truly helpless when placed into this situation. The audience was protective of and fearful for her because she seemed like such a lost lamb. Zoe Saldana does not project that same vulnerability. Part of it might be a carryover from all the tough action roles we’ve seen her in over the years, but it’s also present within this movie. One of the first things we see Rosemary do is chase down a purse-snatcher on foot. Farrow’s Rosemary would never have had the gumption to even attempt something so bold.
The meatier portions of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ will take place in the second half, airing on Thursday, so there is still the chance that it could deliver some thrills now that all the set-up is out of the way. But there is still the sense that, even if one could justify that this story needed to be retold (and I’m sure a reasonable argument could be made, with the right take applied), this is not a story that requires four whole hours to unfold. When ‘The Stand’ got the TV-movie treatment twenty years back, it was condensing a sprawling, epic-length tale and needed all the airtime it could get. ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ is not a story that needs this much room to breathe. Plus there’s the network-television blandness that this movie is awash in, the sort that ‘Hannibal’ inexplicably manages to circumvent. NBC primetime is perhaps not the best venue to retell one of horror’s finest stories. NBC primetime horrifies us in its own unique way.
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