Unquiet
Things

While critics and reviewers don’t seem very taken with Apartment 7A, the recent prequel to Rosemary’s Baby, calling it subpar, lackluster, and “the weakest of the devil baby movies this year,” (ha!) I found myself more forgiving. As someone with a soft spot for the rare “old apartment horror” subgenre, I thought it was a welcome addition to a category that doesn’t get enough entries. By “old apartment horror,” I mean stories set in those grand, aging urban buildings where the architecture itself seems to harbor secrets and malevolence. Now, I’ll admit that Rosemary’s Baby itself leans more heavily into devil baby horror than old apartment horror, but I’m here for the creepy vintage urban living spaces. There’s something about those ornate, aging buildings with their mysterious tenants and dark secrets that I find marvelously thrilling.

Beyond Rosemary’s Baby, there aren’t many films that truly capture that unsettling vibe of old apartments harboring malevolence. Roman Polanski’s “Apartment Trilogy” comes to mind – Repulsion, with its claustrophobic portrayal of a woman’s mental breakdown in a London flat; Rosemary’s Baby itself, set in the ominous Bramford; and The Tenant, where the protagonist’s paranoia is amplified by the bizarre Parisian apartment building he moves into. Sure, there are books like Riley Sager’s Lock Every Door and Nat Cassidy’s Nestlings that tap into this niche, but all around, it seems like underexplored territory. So while Apartment 7A might be continuing the devil baby tradition, I’m watching it for the old apartmentness of it all.

(I took this question to social media, and AGAIN, someone reminded me of The Sentinel. Why do I have such a mental block about this film? That’s it. I am watching The Sentinel next!)

Anyway, Apartment 7A follows Terry, a struggling dancer in 1960s New York, played by the always impressive and wildly expressive Julia Garner. After a painful ankle-breaking career setback, Terry gets entangled with a mysterious older couple who promise her fame and success. Of course, this being a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby, we know things aren’t going to end well for poor Terry.

I have to admit, every time I looked at Garner as Terry, I half-expected her to hiss impatiently, “I don’t know shit about fuck” (channeling her role as Ruth from Ozark) or inquire in an absolutely insane accent, “What are you wearing? You look poor” (à la her portrayal of Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna). This is an actress who gets to deliver the most hilariously iconic lines in her other roles, and it was a bit of a mental adjustment to see her in this particular context.

Apartment 7A may not match the impact of the original, but I appreciated its attempt to explore how someone might fall into the clutches of a sinister cult. Garner’s performance is captivating, and Dianne Wiest brings a cruelly zany energy to her role as Minnie Castevet. I know a lot of people complained about the visuals being anachronistic or not working for various reasons, but I actually loved them. That bedazzled demon monstrosity everyone seems to hate? I thought it was really pretty! But I’m a magpie for sparkly things. I also loved the German Expressionist (or? what would you call that, anyway?) dream sequence bit. Sometimes, a little visual flair goes a long way!

That being said, I’m growing weary of films that consistently portray women as victims of supernatural terror. It’s high time for a fresh perspective on this genre. Picture this: a consensual devil-baby story where the mother-to-be is fully on board, and the horror is experienced by the unsuspecting father. Imagine Sam Neill, circa In the Mouth of Madness, as a former priest who left the clergy for love. Unbeknownst to him, he’s destined to father the Antichrist, with a devil-cult orchestrating the entire scenario from the start. The twist? The demonic influence was within former holy-roller Sam Neill all along! Now that’s a devil-baby movie I’d be excited to see.

Day Twenty-Two of 31 Days Of Horror in years past: 2023 // 2022 // 2021

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