Apartment 7A

The problem with this pretty straightforward reimagining of "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) is that in the intervening half century, the story has been told and retold to such an extent that this really hasn't much potency any more. Julia Garner's "Terry" is a would-be dancer on Broadway who takes quite a terrible tumble that puts her out of action and sees her struggling to find work - or an home. That latter problem is solved when the elderly and kindly "Castavet" couple invite her to use an empty apartment in their building - the "Bamford". Intent on resurrecting her career, she is pursuing fellow-resident and producer "Marchand" (Jim Sturgess) with whom she starts to become romantically entangled. A night she barely recalls then some sudden bouts of sickness leads us all to an inevitable conclusion but something isn't sitting right for "Terry". The increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere in the building, the changing attitudes of her hosts "Minnie" (Dianne Wiest) and "Roman" (Kevin McNally) and a sense that something truly evil is afoot soon sends her into a spiral of paranoiac behaviour that pushes her to the brink! None of the acting is really up to much here nor is the writing and the all-important sense of menace is really quite weakly played out as the whole thing underwhelms. Sure, it's difficult to watch a remake and not anticipate what's going or supposed to happen, but all that really does here is beg the question - why make this at all? Wiest probably takes the acting plaudits - she does exude a certain sense of the downright manipulative, but the rest are going through the motions in a disappointing and procedural fashion. It's all perfectly watchable, but I probably wouldn't bother if I were you - if it ain't broke...

Reviews2

Dean

CinemaSerf