“Apartment 7A” is a prequel, of sorts, to “Rosemary’s Baby,” still one of the most chilling films ever made about losing agency over your own body. The 1968 horror classic takes place in the fictional Bramford, a rambling apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that seems to have been colonized by a coven of devil worshipers. Early in that film, Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse (John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow), a young couple new to the building, meet a troubled woman in the laundry room. Her name is Terry Gionoffrio. “Apartment 7A” is her story.
In the prequel, Terry (played by the reliably good Julia Garner) is a mousy Nebraskan who moved to New York with stars in her eyes. She’s a dancer who’s dying to see her name in lights above a Broadway marquee, just like millions of young people before her. When we meet her, she’s getting her first big break, which unfortunately for her translates to an actual break — of her ankle, that is, onstage. The accident both sidelines her dancing for a while and earns her a reputation around town as “the girl who fell.”
A few months later, desperate to be cast in something, she’s back on the circuit. She flubs her audition for the flashy new show from the Broadway producer Alan Marchand (Jim Sturgess). In a last-ditch shooting of her shot, she heads to the Bramford, where Marchand lives. Things don’t go as expected with him. But she happens to meet Roman and Minnie Castevet (Kevin McNally and Dianne Wiest), a weird but generous older couple who just so happen to have an empty spare apartment that she can stay in if she wants. Just till she gets back on her feet.
At this point, you can sketch the rough outlines of what will happen next. That’s particularly true if you’ve seen “Rosemary’s Baby,” because the two films are strangely similar, a fact that makes this one feel self-defeating. Most of the audience for “Apartment 7A” will, presumably, be familiar with the older film’s plot. As characters from that film are introduced, we already know how their stories will end, and the screenplay (written by Natalie Erika James, Christian White and Skylar James) holds few additional surprises.
That’s the main problem with “Apartment 7A,” though Natalie Erika James directs competently enough. It’s passably spooky, sure. But all interesting prequels have something in common: They shed new light on their predecessors that expands, illuminates or complicates them in some way. “Apartment 7A” feels like a predictable retread.
Even the conceptual core feels predictable. “Rosemary’s Baby” has a reputation for being about Satanism and the devil’s baby. But its genius isn’t in that part of the story, which is, by the end, a little hokey. Its lasting power comes from its fundamental premise: It is inherently terrifying to live in a young and fertile woman’s body. Everyone else feels comfortable controlling it and commenting on it, especially if you become pregnant, and writing off your reactions as being too “emotional.” For most of the film, Rosemary isn’t sure if she’s imagining things or if she’s really in danger. Is everyone conspiring against her, or is it just the hormones? Is she just another hysterical woman?
The same basic questions power “Apartment 7A,” with some added era-appropriate elements related to women’s ambition and abortion. Terry is willing to put up with a lot of nonsense — the nosy Castevets, strange behaviors, things that go bump in the night and worse — because she will do anything to succeed, and also because as a young woman in show business she’s seen it all before.
But the movie doesn’t have much to add, and little to surprise and delight: “Rosemary’s Baby,” but make it single career girl.
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