Rosemary’s Baby was a 1968 film that focused on a young couple Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor husband Gary played by Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes. They moved into an apartment in a building with a bit of a reputation.  Their nosey neighbors Roman and Minnie Castevet (Sydney Blackmer, Ruth Gordon) don’t make anything better. When Rosemary gets pregnant she doesn’t feel right. Once she sees her baby she understands why. This film was directed by Roman Polansky based on the book of the same name by Ira Levin. Everything these days gets a remake, reboot, sequel, or prequel, so why not this? That’s where the new film Apartment 7A comes in. It is a prequel to the classic film Rosemary’s Baby.

A young actress Terry (Julia Garner) lives with her friend Annie (Marli Siu) in New York. She’s an actress who falls and breaks her ankle. When she gets better she tries out for a new stage production, but she’s humiliated by the director Alan Marchand (Jim Sturgess). As she’s walking out she meets a couple Roman (Kevin McNally) and Minnie Castavet (Diane Weist). Sound familiar? Because they’re the same characters from Rosemary’s Baby. They offer Terry a new lease on life. Literally, they give her a nice new apartment that they’re not currently using. One thing leads to another and Terry winds up pregnant with a baby she doesn’t know how she got. This leads her to investigate the situation further. What she finds out she doesn’t like. This leads to tragedy. 

Julia Garner is a young actress famous for her role in the Netflix series Ozark,  but she’s also had a few good turns in some indie films like The Assistant,  and  The Royal Hotel. She has proven she has the chops to stay in this business for a long time. Her role as Terry in l Apartment 7A is a good performance, but not great. The material is a derivative of Rosemary’s Baby so she’s not doing anything extravagant with her performance. She gives it the old college try, but it’s not on par with her previously stellar work in other films and television series.

With a show set in a specific time period, in his case the 60s, they have to look the part. Specifically the clothes, hairstyles, and the production design. The production design of this film is pretty good. The movie is mainly in Branford and the various apartments are set up nicely. All the various accouterments are on display in these apartments.  From ironing boards to old-fashioned ovens and so forth. This film got all of that stuff right. The clothes and hairstyles were right on the money as well. It felt like I went back in time to the 60s.

The director Natalie Erika James tried to be as faithful as she could with this prequel of the popular Polanski film. There were different touches she threw in that differed from that movie. Dream sequences, or were they, were used to show viewers some behind-the-scenes things that were going on. These had a purpose of putting the audience in the know and making things confusing for the Garner character. This is an old trick in horror films. Did this stuff happen? Who knows? Let’s say it did keep things interesting for the most part.

Apartment 7A is supposed to be a faithful prequel to Rosemary’s Baby,  but it had some things that didn’t fit together for me. Namely the dream sequences and Garner’s one-note performance. She just didn’t seem like she was into this role that much to me. The dream sequences were a bit wonky and looked more like scenes out of an S&M nightclub to me. The production design and Diane Weist were the best parts of the movie. Sturgess was not a good villain either. I’d say just see the original film, Rosemary’s Baby this one is trying to copy.

2 ½  stars

Dan Skip Allen