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Ira Levin - Rosemary's Baby Review
Overall 5.00 of 5
(by 1 user)
great psychological horror--both novel and film are outstanding
character-lover, fiction reader, non-fiction reader, a library-goer
| Pros |
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NOV
18
2007
So, as the story goes, Rosemary becomes pregnant after having a very hallucinatory night where she dreams of Satan raping her, which is not a dream. Rosemary wakes up thinking it is all a dream, and later assumes guy is the father of her child, but in actually she is carrying the devil's child. She is taken under Roman and Minnie 's wings, sending her to an obstetritian they know (who happens to be in their cult) and weird things start to happen. After the main actor in a play goes blind, Guy gets the lead part Their good friend Hutch mysteriously dies after a sudden hospitalization at the same time he is starting to make the realization of who Roman and Minnie are. Rosemary gets strange cravings of eating raw meat. And she is feeling a lot of pain from the baby, unusual pain that Dr. Saperstein says "is normal" and that all the standard baby/pregnancy books Rosemary is reading are rubbish.
Both the novel and the movie adaptation vividly portray the psychological horror that Rosemary goes through, both through the weird events and ultimately to the birth that leaves Rosemary feeling completely betrayed and alone. While the literal story is about the birth of Satan's child, it also chillingly portrays a mother who may actually be losing her mind. Especially in the movie version, as Roman Polanski is an athiest so for him a literal movie about Satan bearing a child would never be real, the partum madness a woman can feel is strongly portrayed. In addition, it is also about betrayal--with Rosemary being used by her husband for his sucess. He wants sucess so much, that he is willing to risk his own wife, all the while justifying that no one has been hurt in this endeavor because Rosemary really did want a child.
This is more of a psychological thriller than horror, per se, as there is not the normal gore and fantasmic effects and story lines than normal horror novels and movies. For those that prefer blood and guts horror, this is novel and movie is usually seen as "boring". But for those of us that enjoy watching and/or reading a good intellegent plot instead of being only scared or sickened through mindless gore, this is an extremely satisfying read and film.
Ira Levin - Rosemary's Baby is recommended by whispfeath
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