Rosemary's Baby review

 Number 345 on the top 1000 films of all time is Roman Polanski's 1968 psychological-horror film 'Rosemary's Baby.'

Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her husband, stage-actor, Guy (John Cassavetes) are two newlyweds who have just moved to New York. Looking to settle down and start a family, they are soon expecting a baby. But Rosemary suspects that her husband and her neighbours have sinister intentions for her unborn child.

Production designer Richard Sylbert deemed this the "greatest horror film without any horror in it." I don't think I could have described this film any better. Despite not having any gore, jump scares or big, bad villain, Polanski still created an overwhelming sense of dread. True, the villains are a coven of witches, but it's not like Halloween, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the Wickerman where you can identify one key villain. 

You know that things are going to hit the fan - it's just a question of when. This is a film comprised of small, scary jigsaw pieces like the apparent suicide of Rosemary's neighbour or Guy getting the main part in a play, by virtue of another actor going inexplicably blind, which all add up to a frightening picture - Rosemary has been impregnated with the anti-Christ. All of these small parts culminate in a fever dream where Rosemary imagines that she is being raped by a demonic presence - perhaps even the devil himself. When she wakes up, she discovers that Guy actually raped her while she was asleep.

During production, Mia Farrow was undergoing with some marital problems with then-husband Frank Sinatra. He wanted her to leave the film and she was about to relent, before a studio executive convinced her to stay saying that she would win an Oscar for her performance. She stayed, Sinatra divorced her and Farrow wasn't even nominated for an Academy Award. Some have labelled this an egregious snub. I would agree. Farrow was great. She portrayed the fear, terror, but also resoluteness that you would expect from somebody like Rosemary.

I found it strange that Farrow wasn't nominated yet her co-star Ruth Gordon was not only nominated, but went onto win for Best Supporting Actress. Gordon played Farrow's neighbour Minnie Castevet - a busy body who becomes a little too involved in Rosemary and her unborn baby. It was a fine performance. It certainly wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. Was it Oscar-worthy? Was it memorable enough to justify winning an Academy Award? I'm not too sure about that.

Nonetheless, Rosemary's Baby was probably one of the scariest horror films I've seen that didn't have any actual horror in it - other than Farrow being snubbed by the Academy, of course.