Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.0

Rosemary's Baby Blu-ray Movie Review

The road to hell is paved with needless remakes.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 9, 2014

Zoe Saldana, in an Electronic Press Kit interview included on this new Blu-ray, manages to keep a completely straight face when she insists that this Rosemary’s Baby is not a remake of Rosemary's Baby. Some cynics may aver that this constitutes some of the most bravura acting Ms. Saldana accomplishes with regard to anything related to this largely lamentable—remake. There’s no dearth of critical agita about the creative laziness that often seems to envelop show business, whether that be cookie cutter albums from “major artists”, feature films that seem to have trundled off a nearby assembly line, or, yes, television miniseries that traffic in the tried (trite?) and true, and so it’s probably pointless to spend much time gnashing one’s teeth over this incredibly wrongheaded attempt to “modernize” one of the classics of both horror literature and horror filmmaking. Why? will be the salient question most viewers (at least those old enough to remember Ira Levin’s original novel and the shockingly brilliant Roman Polanski film adaptation) will be asking themselves. What indeed is the point of this pointless exercise? Is some brilliant twentysomething pitching a new Gone with the Wind miniseries? How about a post-modern Citizen Kane? (Let’s not give Baz Luhrmann any ideas.)

Ira Levin was writing “twists” long before filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan were even a glint in their parents’ eyes (Shyamalan wasn’t even born until well after the film version of Rosemary’s Baby became a global phenomenon). But Levin’s literary acuity didn’t always translate easily to the screen, and in fact the first film based on one of his bestselling mysteries, A Kiss Before Dying, couldn’t quite figure out how to translate Levin’s literary sleight of hand to a visual medium. That may have been at least one reason why there was such a huge gap between A Kiss Before Dying, which appeared in 1953, and Rosemary’s Baby, which stormed up best seller charts in 1967. (In the meantime, Levin had contributed the book and lyrics to the Broadway flop Drat! The Cat!, a show which closed quickly but which gave Barbra Streisand one of her signature hits with “He Touched Me”. Streisand’s then husband Elliott Gould had starred in the short lived musical.)

Subsequent film adaptations of Levin’s novels were highly variable, with some (like The Boys From Brazil) managing to capture at least the gist of the surprises Levin almost always had in store, and others (like The Stepford Wives) simply devolving into cartoonish buffoonery. That is perhaps one reason why Polanski’s adaptation of Rosemary’s Baby is so universally admired—it brilliantly reimagines the nightmare world of Rosemary Woodhouse in a completely different medium, while eschewing little if any of Levin’s intrinsic nuance with characters. Rosemary’s Baby remains not just one of the most successful horror adaptations in the history of film, but one of the most successful horror films of all time, period. Which again begs the question about this miniseries: Why?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several decades, chances are you already know the “surprise” in store as Rosemary’s Baby wends its way toward its devastating conclusion. WIth that foreknowledge firmly entrenched in most viewers’ minds, this miniseries simply attempts to divert attention with any number of silly sidebars. The miniseries opens with the shocking suicide of a woman, an element which starts things off in an appropriately hysterical fashion but which at least has some connection to Levin’s original storyline. We next meet Rosemary (Zoe Saldana) and Guy (Patrick J. Adams) at an obstetrician’s office, where they’re devastated to learn their expected child has no heartbeat. Okay, strike one, but at least that might set up some emotional resonance for Rosemary once she does become successfully pregnant.

But then the miniseries just starts marauding through a kind of “Bizarro world” rendition of Levin’s original concept and characters. The Woodhouses move to Paris to make a new beginning, and an attempted purse snatching brings Rosemary to the ultra creepy apartment complex where she meets Margaux (Carole Bouquet, a long way from Luis Buñuel's That Obscure Object of Desire) and Roman Castavet (Jason Isaacs, amazingly close to virtually every other nefarious character he’s played in everything from Harry Potter: Complete 8-Film Collection to The Patriot). Unlike the unforgettable bourgeois ambience of Minnie and Roman in the original film, here the devilish pair are stylish, suave and high class. This completely subverts Levin’s original subtext that Satanism was almost a mundane fact of life.

There are innumerable other small and large changes adaptors Scott Abbott and James Wong introduce into this version, none of which add one whit to the spookiness the audience should feel. In fact, this two part opus feels incredibly padded, with Rosemary not even having her “it’s just lunch” (and/or dinner) rendezvous with a certain denizen of Hades until the end of the first part. However, it’s hard not to feel a certain sense of giddiness when this Rosemary undergoes the same Vidal Sassoon hair makeover that Mia Farrow did so memorably in the original version. Evidently some things, like Satan and bobbed hair, never go out of fashion.

It’s almost shocking to see a director of Agniezska Holland’s abilities associated with this mess. Were the producers out to prove that another Polish director could do Rosemary’s Baby as well as Polanski did all those years ago? Holland has a fine visual sense, one which makes the most of this Rosemary’s Baby’s Parisian settings, but she’s hamstrung by an overheated teleplay and by the mere fact that virtually everyone watching this version is going to know the basic outlines of the story. Holland has given the film world several undeniable classics, including two of the best films ever made about the horrors of World War II, Europa Europa and In Darkness. Though she’s been plying her trade in episodic television of late (including several episodes of Treme: The Complete Series), Rosemary’s Baby is certainly not going to win her many new accolades. She might want to take a meeting with one Lucifer to discuss the ins and outs of such a precipitous fall from grace.

Rosemary's Baby Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Rosemary's Baby is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. According to the IMDb, Rosemary's Baby was shot with the newer Sony PMW-F55, Sony's "answer" to other native HD capture units like the Red system. While I haven't been able to track down whether Holland and cinematographer Michel Amathieu used the PMW-F55's ability to capture in 4K, 2K or HD, the results here are often extraordinarily sharp and well detailed. This Sony system has generated lots of positive reviews for the range of colors and light conditions it can deal with, and Rosemary's Baby, for all its dramatic ineptitude, is often a visual feast, especially once things get to Paris. Colors are natural and nicely saturated, and fine detail remains commendable even in darker midrange shots. Contrast is also consistent. There are some very minor issues with relative softness due to the hyperkinetic camera movements, but this is a rather striking looking presentation from a purely visual standpoint. No problematic artifacts were in evidence throughout the presentation.

Rosemary's Baby Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Rosemary's Baby's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is competent, but never very spooky or overly immersive. I must admit I'm almost angry at the boneheaded decisions composer Antoni Lazarkiewicz made in scoring this film. Lazarkiewicz may have been chosen by the producers in much the same manner as Holland, for the original film's composer, Christopher Komeda (as his name was transliterated back then) was, like Lazarkiewicz (and Holland and Polanski), Polish. Unfortunately, Lazarkiewicz's music comes off as just plain hackneyed when compared to the elegant creepiness of Komeda's work. Like Komeda, Lazarkiewicz crafts a lullaby in the standard 3/4 as a main theme, but he adds a snare drum, making the whole thing sound like some kind of get to know you dance at a retirement home. All of this said, the music is one of the few elements that regularly visits the surround channels. Occasional foley effects populate the side and rear channels, but mostly this track veers toward the front and center, where dialogue is admittedly rendered very cleanly and clearly.

Rosemary's Baby Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Fear is Born: The Making of Rosemary's Baby (1080p; 12:03) features the inimitable Ms. Saldana insisting this isn't a remake. Now that's frightening.


• Grand Guignol: Paris Production Design (1080p; 6:35) is a brief but fairly interesting look at the miniseries' opulent sets.

Rosemary's Baby Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The iconic tagline of Polanski's classic film version of Levin's classic novel read "Pray for Rosemary's baby." My hunch is not even prayer could have helped this sad excuse for a miniseries. The scenic values of Paris at least partially compensate for one of the more boneheaded attempts to revisit a property that should have been left resolutely alone. Technical merits here are very strong for those who are interested in purchasing.