Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby

83% Liked It
liked it

Rosemary's Baby

Charles Grodin, Elisha Cook Jr., John Cassavetes, Maurice Evans, Mia Farrow

A young married couple, trying unsuccessfully to conceive, finally have it happen when the husband strikes a deal with the devil worshippers next door. All of this is unbeknownst to the poor wife/moth...( read more  read more... )er who soon realizes she could be having Satan's child.

Id: 10898706

Do you want to see this movie?

My Friends Said...


Recent Reviews


  • December 7, 2009
    i thought this was hilarious! almost like it didnt mean 2 be but it did at the sametime. I didnt like the whole movie dat much doh. but i'd watch it again
  • November 8, 2009
    Roman Polanski's horror classic is literally pregnant with paranoia. Mia Farrow gets an iconic cropped 'do, John Cassavetes broods

    Halfway through Polanski's classic psycho-horror, Rosemary (Farrow) decides to chop off her bob. Not since Delilah took to Samson's barnet has a hai...( read more)rcut signalled such a decline.

    It's at that moment that Rosemary's slump into madness begins. She's pregnant, she's in love with husband Cassavetes, and living in a beautiful new apartment. But a burning pain in her womb tells her something's not right. Why are her elderly neighbours so concerned? Why has hubby's career suddenly blossomed? Surely her memory of being raped by Satan was just a dream?

    Ira Levin's story erodes Rosemary's sanity drip by drip. A pierced ear, a foul smelling charm, a chocolate mousse with a chalky flavour, these are the unlikely fertilisers of her paranoia. In Polanski's hands their significance remains chillingly ambiguous as he explores the natural alienation of pregnancy. Truly terrifying.
  • September 14, 2009
    Pretty creepy. It wasn't the typical horror film, but it was pretty good.
  • July 28, 2009
    This is how you make a fucking horror movie. You make it scary rather than trying to scare the audiences. You'll find no unnecessary bumps and bangs here. Check out the freakish and fantastic dream sequences, they are almost perfectly silent yet still get deep under your skin. Th...( read more)e editing in these parts are very impressive as well, creating visual illusions without special effects. It also contains some of the damned finest performances a horror film has ever seen. Gordon is perfect and plays off Blackmer very well. The theme is one of the best themes ever. It arrives in many forms, always original and powerful, though one can hardly beat Mia Farrow's vocal rendition. The film also succeeds at doing something that today's horrors seem incapable of. Releasing exposition in a timely and unobtrusive fashion. It just flows out naturally. Rosemary's Baby attacks enough of our inherent fears that it's impossible to shake. Those around us not being trustworthy, people thinking you're paranoid or crazy and attacks on the home are very simple but very real and nerve racking fears.
  • May 1, 2009
    Pregnancy is the time in a woman's life that, despite the hormone imbalance and the emotional changes, is charged in an overwhelming among of love and support and the notion that she is slowly gestating a human life, male or female, a child that will bring her (and her family) ha...( read more)ppiness. Motherhood has been depicted as beautiful, symbolic, Woman being Creation in progress in ancient cultures, a Thing to venerate and respect and even worship, Something capable of ensuring the continuation of a family line, a tradition, and hence, life and culture for an entire strata of society. Nothing is supposed to go wrong, or at least, not at the level of what happens to Rosemary Woodhouse's pregnancy, which is the ultimate wrong thing.

    What Ira Levin seems to want to tell us in this "plot" surrounding Rosemary's pregnancy is that society and its religious tradition can be substituted by something much more sinister, as-yet unseen but gestant -- the force of will, the creation of Man's own version of what he believes will be the new wave of humanity. Is God dead? Well, considering the timing of the novel and the movie with society's disillusionment with Establishment, the onset of Vietnam, the loss of innocence of a country just years ago with the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, He just as well may be. Religion and religious figures pop up during the movie, but seem unable to bring any comfort and only add to the vague sense of unease that permeates ROSEMARY'S BABY.

    And this nagging unease is precisely what both author and director give us: something not quite, completely there, something that seems to be happening just off-limits, barely overheard through the flimsy walls which divide these prewar apartment buildings converted into chic, livable spaces. The way the banal elements that are so much a part of our lives are overthrown so subtly makes the horror that is the movie's denouement even more tragic. Surely the nice neighbors can't be more than just that -- they're so helpful... well, maybe a little too helpful. Surely the death of that girl Rosemary befriends was just a freak suicide. Surely the doctor's recommendations for Rosemary are the best -- don't doctor's always know what's good for us? And surely, one's own partner would not have done the unthinkable in order to advance professionally now, would he?

    Paranoia of the unseen is a powerful way to tell a horror story without ever giving away any shock cuts or showing the boogeyman. While it becomes abundantly clear early on that this is a story of witchcraft of the worst kind, the only time some of it makes its way in front of the camera is in the extremely stylized ritual/rape scene, and even then, since Rosemary is having what might be the worst nightmare of her life, one isn't quite sure of what is happening, and of course, in the end, when all is revealed in a comic yet horrific way. That takes skill in a storyteller and what makes ROSEMARY'S BABY so completely disturbing even now, almost forty years from its release unto the public. Also the fact that it never relies on a twist ending so common today but on the nuanced performance of the actors portraying real urbanites enhances: from Mia Farrow who carries the movie and even at the end retains a resigned innocence to her fate once her suspicions are facts to John Cassavettes who plays his part slimy straight, and supporting actors Ruth Gordon and Sydney Blackmer who have the hard task of making kindly and eccentric hide sinister just underneath. Their performance makes you wonder who exactly are your neighbors, and if they might be harboring some deadly lifestyle, and makes you feel uneasy being alone even in an empty hallway or accepting anyone's offered smoothie.
  • December 24, 2009
    My wife was 6 months pregnant when we saw this.
  • December 13, 2009
    this film deals with the whole deconstruction debate in a way that i resonate with. i find that area of theory totally unhelpful.
  • December 9, 2009
    You have to watch this movie to appreciate all the copycat movies you get these days.
  • December 7, 2009
    Mia should do a sequel. Franks gone!
  • December 7, 2009
    What sets this apart from an average film of its kind, is that it isn't constantly trying to wow us into appreciation. Taking the time instead, to explore the juxtaposition of character and situation at hand, in a more genuine, natural way.

Opening This Week

Top Box Office

Upcoming Movies

New on DVD