"Rosemary's Baby"
is the ultimate movie concerning cults in
the horror genre, thank you very much. It has all the elements that you need -
an old building in New York with a storied history, a dedicated cult whose
leaders live next to Rosemary, a cult tempting enough to seduce and recruit
Rosemary's husband, and the complete helplessness of Rosemary as her due date
comes closer and closer. And she has sex with the Devil itself! “Rosemary’s
Baby” is highly regarded among many film institutions and is often thought of
as one of the better horror movies ever made. The director Roman Polanski
co-wrote the script and tried his best to follow the contents of the book that
was written by Ira Levin. I have read the book and I will agree that it is a
very faithful adaption.
Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband Guy move into the
Bramford, an apartment building with a dark history, in New York City. Guy is
an actor who is trying to find his break into movies while Rosemary is a simple
housewife. She meets a young woman named Terry one day while doing her laundry.
Terry tells Rosemary how she is living with an older couple in the same floor
as Rosemary and Guy. They promise each other that they will do their laundry
together in the future but that doesn’t come to pass because later that night
Terry kills herself by jumping out of a window. Guy and Rosemary meet the
Castevets, the couple that Terry was living with.
The Castevets take an immediate liking of Rosemary and Guy
and become a major influence on their lives. For example, on the night that Guy
and Rosemary decide to try to conceive a child, Minnie Castevet brings over a
chalky chocolate desert for them to eat. Rosemary hates it and hides the
contents when Guy leaves the room. But later that night she is drugged and has vivid
memories of seeing the Castevets and others standing around her naked and
chanting, and then having sex with a hairy wild beast-man. She realizes and
declares “This is no dream!” before passing out again. In the morning Guy
claims that he had sex with her while she was passed out, which doesn’t sit
well with her.
Soon, Rosemary finds out that she is pregnant and Guy and the
Castevets become ecstatic. Minnie begins to come over unannounced with a friend
and doesn’t leave Rosemary alone. She even gives Rosemary a charm filled with
odd smelling herbs, the same charm that Terry had shown Rosemary the day that
they met. Rosemary begins to suffer from stomach pains and losing weight
instead of gaining which causes concern for her friend Hutch. He looks into the
matter, including a closer look into the Castevets and the history of the
Bramford. He discovers that Roman Castevet is really Stephen Marcato, the son
of a resident who was a Satanist and was killed as a martyr. Rosemary
eventually discovers this through a trail of clues that Hutch had left behind
before he mysteriously fell into a coma and died. To her horror, she finds out
that everyone surrounding her is a member of a Satanic Cult, including Guy who
was seduced by the opportunities to further his acting career. Rosemary is
trapped in her own personal Hell and ends up giving birth to the son of Satan.
The movie ends when Roman convinces Rosemary that she doesn’t have to join
their cult but that she should still be a loving mother to her child, which in
the end is all she ever wanted to be.
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