Apartment 7A review: The fraught challenges of the Rosemary’s Baby prequel

Prequels are a tricky thing. It can be a hard ask to demand that someone invest in a story about which they already know the ending.

In the case of Apartment 7A, it’s an even harder bar to clear when it’s supposed to precede one of the most iconic psychological horrors in the history of cinema.

Apartment 7A, directed by Australian Natalie Erika James, picks up on a minor character from Ira Levin’s novel which was adapted by Roman Polanski in 1968 with Mia Farrow in the title role.

In that, Rosemary meets a young neighbour named Terry Gionoffrio who soon dies in devastating circumstances. She is only in one scene in the film and her demise hints at something more nefarious going on at the Bramford, the creepy building the Woodhouses have moved into.

Apartment 7A makes her the central figure, an origin story of a minor character whose fate was entwined with Rosemary’s, only in that when the villains, Minnie and Roman Castavet tried to birth the anti-christ through her and failed, they set their eyes on Rosemary.

When we meet Terry a few months before the Woodhouses cross the Bramford threshold, she is a dancer who is recovering from an injury sustained when she landed poorly during a performance. She is staying with a friend and addicted to painkillers she buys from a local busker.

She’s also desperately trying to land another role but when she’s known as “the girl who fell”, it’s hard going. That’s when she meets the Castavets, after she follows a producer home to the Bramford.

The Castavets appear to be a sweet old couple with too much money and no one else to spend it on. A little overbearing, sure, but harmless.

Diane Wiest takes over the role of Minnie from Ruth Gordon, and she alternates between doting and menacing. It’s a carefully calibrated performance that would be effective if we didn’t already know Minnie’s true agenda.

That’s the problem with Apartment 7A, any tension and suspense it manages the build is immediately deflated with the knowledge of what’s to come.

Julia Garner as Terry gives a persuasive performance as a vulnerable young woman being exploited by the Castavets. She gives that character a streak of defiance, which was necessary given her fate.

Terry strikes a Faustian bargain with the Castavets without fully understanding what she was agreeing to, but the lure of seeing her name in lights was too strong.

The problem with Apartment 7A is not just that you have a general idea of what will happen in that narrative universe, you know the specificities of what happens to Terry and the Castavets.

Their destinies are sealed – the devil’s spawn will be born, the Castavets will rejoice and Terry will fall to her death.

Apartment 7A feels like treading water.

But other prequels have successfully negotiated this fraught challenge.

One way is to focus on characters you haven’t met before, and even if you know what must happen to them in order for the next chapter (which you’ve already read) to happen, there is still a mystery as to the how.

Rogue One is a perfect example of this.

The Star Wars prequel is centred on a group of renegades who stole the plans for the Death Star that Leia smuggled to Obiwan in R2-D2. You know the characters of Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor, Chirrut Imwe, and K-2SO will die, but you don’t know how or when.

Filmmakers including Tony Gilroy, Gareth Edwards and Chris Weitz were able to breathe new life into the franchise by creating full character arcs for people who were new to us.

It also helped that Rogue One, with its pacy action and compelling, tight storytelling, was the best of the 2010s Star Wars movies.

A Quiet Place: Day One also worked because it was almost a spin-off prequel. It didn’t make any mention of the Abbott family, instead setting up the story in New York and with two new characters whose fates were not yet decided.

Furiosa suffered a similar fate to Apartment 7A in that as a standalone, it functioned perfectly fine. But as an appendage to an existing narrative universe, it was dragged down by what audiences already knew. It heaved under the weight of expectations and familiarity.

The original Rosemary’s Baby didn’t set up a reason why anyone should be that curious in where Terry came from. She was both too connected to the original story and not interesting enough.

The creative success of the upcoming Mufasa: The Lion King will depend on the execution but it has justified its existence in that the character of Simba’s father is so iconic and yet fleeting. We want to know more about him.

The same is true for Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me or Cruella de Vil, although the Emma Stone movie was middling.

Was anyone really looking for the Terry Gionoffrio origin story? A prequel on the Castavets or the Bramford would’ve made more sense.

Apartment 7A is streaming now on Paramount+