Apartment 7A Review: Rosemary’s Baby Prequel Doesn’t Have Many New Ideas

   September 28, 2024
apartment 7a 2024 movie
Apartment 7A (2024), directed by Natalie Erika James

Score: 4/10

The long, long line of mediocre to terrible horror franchise reboots within the last few years did not instill any sort of hope that Apartment 7A would buck the trend and offer some refreshing new takes on the genre. After all, it was quietly dumped on Paramount+ and given nearly zero marketing, making it a tall task to find a decent audience in the vast landscape of horror streaming options.

And boasting a cast without a lot of familiar faces and being directed by a filmmaker like Natalie Erika James that is not a household name, the movie seems like a tough find for anyone who didn’t already know it existed. So it’s at a disadvantage right off the rip, and that’s before diving into what turns out to be a rather repetitive script without much to cling onto.

That’s because while the film insists its a prequel to the 1967 horror hit Rosemary’s Baby, Apartment 7A is really just a low-stakes remake structured way too similarly and lacking any good reason for existing. Some solid set design that takes you back decades is engrossing, but the final package is otherwise bland because it does little to unearth new lore or scares from the nearly half-century old classic that pushed horror’s boundaries and sensibilities.

Julia Garner stars as a struggling young dancer named Terry, who finds herself drawn in by dark forces when a peculiar, well-connected older couple offer her shelter and promise her a shot at fame following. She’s recovering from a broken ankle, an injury that hinders her ability to find steady employment and pursue her dream of dancing professionally and living comfortably. While between jobs, she meets the cast of characters living at her apartment building that all harbor the same secrets.

Garner is quite good, although she’s played characters similar to this many times before, almost all of which were in better movies that contained more creative and precise execution. Natalie Erika James is best known as the director of 2020’s Relic – an independent horror film on Shudder that received much more critical acclaim than Apartment 7A has thus far. The former is an indie film disconnected from a franchise. It’s easier to judge a film like that on its own merit, let alone a codified classic the way that Rosemary’s Baby is.

The Castevet elderly couple, Minnie and Roman, are played by Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally, respectively. They hold their own, but their characters are significantly less interesting knowing their motivations. A big reason Rosemary’s Baby works so well is because the mystery at the center is so intriguing and scary. Knowing the key to that mystery going in would spoil much of the emotional effect that film has. As a result, Apartment 7A struggles to manufacture a new way to effectively convey scares.

There are some design elements to Apartment 7A that I like quite a bit, but it doesn’t have much tension or horror to match. Julia Garner excels in a performance she’s all too familiar with, but it is not enough to elevate what is going on around her. A remake disguised as a prequel, there’s not much of a reason I’d think to return to Apartment 7A.

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