House 7A Brings Atmospheric Backstory to a Celebrated Horror Story

If “prequel to a basic film in regards to the start of the Antichrist” feels like one thing you’ve already encountered this yr, you’re not possessed: again in April, The First Omen delivered a gruesomely artistic exploration of occasions main into The Omen. Apartment 7A endeavors to do the identical for Rosemary’s Baby, and whereas its story presents fewer shocks than The First Omen, it’s nonetheless a thoughtfully thought of prequel anchored by an intriguing perspective.

Impressed by Ira Levin’s 1967 novel and Roman Polanski’s 1968 movie, House 7A was co-written and directed by Natalie Erika James, who additionally made 2020’s Relic—the story of three generations of girls grappling with a creepy presence of their household dwelling. One other sinister dwelling takes middle stage in House 7A, and Rosemary’s Child followers realize it properly: the Bramford, a once-elegant New York Metropolis house constructing whose growing older partitions conceal a coven of equally growing older Satanic witches.

The brand new movie’s manufacturing design pays shut consideration to element, and whereas the setting feels genuine, it’s not aiming to precisely copy Polanski’s model. There are key components that carry over, nevertheless, together with these very skinny partition partitions that enable raised voices and the haunting piano notes of “Für Elise” to waft between items.

Into this towering pile of darkish wooden, yellow lighting, and birdcage elevators stumbles Terry Gionoffrio, a personality who elements into the primary quarter-hour of Rosemary’s Child. House 7A takes us again a yr or so earlier; it’s 1965, and Terry is simply beginning a promising dance profession when she suffers an agonizing damage. Julia Garner (Ozark, subsequent yr’s The Incredible 4: First Steps) brings a vulnerability to her model of Terry. You are feeling her frustration as she faces not simply cash woes, audition rejections, and a worrisome dependence on painkillers, but in addition the insufferable feeling that the targets she’s been obsessively pursuing are slipping away.

In that headspace, you perceive why she may make some choices she in any other case wouldn’t, like accepting a free place to dwell from Minnie and Roman Castavet (Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally—each good, however not as iconic as Rosemary’s Child stars Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) proper after assembly them for the primary time. The Castavets, you see, merely adore serving to troubled younger ladies get their lives collectively. They’re additionally good pals with a Bramford resident (Jim Sturgess) who’s written a brand new musical that Terry would dearly like to be solid in.

We all know that is all a really dangerous concept—in spite of everything, Terry’s destiny is the rationale Rosemary Woodhouse turns into Devil’s subsequent womb of curiosity—however James and Garner discover methods to deliver emotional nuance to Terry’s more and more bleak state of affairs. Very very like Rosemary, she has to place the items collectively for herself in a narrative drenched in aggressive ambition, gaslighting, emotional abuse, sexual assault, physique horror, loneliness, and the petrifying feeling of not being protected in a single’s own residence. However in distinction to Rosemary—a housewife cheerfully hoping to turn out to be pregnant—Terry is single, broke, unable to seek out work, and with none help system past her sympathetic greatest good friend.

For all of the callbacks to Rosemary’s Child (most of them are apparent: the impulsive quick haircut, the vodka blush cocktails, a memorable silver necklace), the brand new film does make one main alteration involving the intersecting plots of the 2 movies—it’s an intriguing selection, and one which provides a layer of separation between Terry and Rosemary’s ordeals.

However there’s additionally one other huge distinction that’s much less straightforward to place your finger on. Probably the most chilling elements of Rosemary’s Child is that it’s not simply the story of a mom-to-be slowly realizing she’s the goal of an evil conspiracy. Most of it takes place within the Bramford, however it feels greater than that. Together with the protagonist, the viewer steadily begins to really feel paranoid in regards to the world Rosemary’s Child takes place in. Simply how many individuals are individuals on this apocalyptic plot? Is that this a worldwide future of doom we can’t keep away from? By the point that well-known closing scene rolls round, our fears are largely confirmed true.

House 7A feels extra intimate. Terry might fantasize about having her title up in lights, however she’s extra generally recognized round Broadway as “the lady who fell,” a snarky reference to her devastating onstage tumble. However she’s additionally “the lady who fell” for the concept full strangers will be selfless and type—and who realizes too late the devastating value required to deliver her glittering goals again to life.

On a closing be aware, there’s an extra similarity that hyperlinks House 7A and The First Omen: each have been made by ladies, in distinction to the basic movies that impressed them. So typically in horror we see feminine characters put by their paces by male administrators; these movies sign a welcome change in perspective, notably because it involves the acquainted style trope of girls’s our bodies being seized and appropriated in grisly methods.

House 7A streams on Paramount+ and can be out there for digital buy September 27.

Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to count on the most recent Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and every thing you have to find out about the way forward for Doctor Who.