Condo 7A Brings Atmospheric Backstory to a Celebrated Horror Story

If “prequel to a basic film concerning the delivery 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 inventive 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 viewpoint.

Impressed by Ira Levin’s 1967 novel and Roman Polanski’s 1968 movie, Condo 7A was co-written and directed by Natalie Erika James, who additionally made 2020’s Relic—the story of three generations of ladies grappling with a creepy presence of their household dwelling. One other sinister dwelling takes middle stage in Condo 7A, and Rosemary’s Child followers comprehend it effectively: the Bramford, a once-elegant New York Metropolis house constructing whose ageing partitions conceal a coven of equally ageing 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 parts that carry over, nonetheless, together with these very skinny partition partitions that enable raised voices and the haunting piano notes of “Für Elise” to waft between models.

Into this towering pile of darkish wooden, yellow lighting, and birdcage elevators stumbles Terry Gionoffrio, a personality who components into the primary quarter-hour of Rosemary’s Child. Condo 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’re 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 objectives she’s been obsessively pursuing are slipping away.

In that headspace, you perceive why she would possibly make some selections she in any other case wouldn’t, like accepting a free place to stay 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 buddies 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 unhealthy thought—in any case, Terry’s destiny is the rationale Rosemary Woodhouse turns into Devil’s subsequent womb of curiosity—however James and Garner discover methods to convey 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 secure in a single’s own residence. However in distinction to Rosemary—a housewife cheerfully hoping to change into pregnant—Terry is single, broke, unable to search out work, and with none help system past her sympathetic greatest buddy.

For all of the callbacks to Rosemary’s Child (most of them are apparent: the impulsive brief 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 large distinction that’s much less straightforward to place your finger on. One of the chilling points 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, nevertheless it feels greater than that. Together with the protagonist, the viewer steadily begins to really feel paranoid concerning the world Rosemary’s Child takes place in. Simply how many individuals are contributors on this apocalyptic plot? Is that this a worldwide future of doom we can’t keep away from? By the point that well-known ultimate scene rolls round, our fears are largely confirmed true.

Condo 7A feels extra intimate. Terry might fantasize about having her identify up in lights, however she’s extra generally identified 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 that full strangers might be selfless and sort—and who realizes too late the devastating worth required to convey her glittering desires again to life.

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

Condo 7A streams on Paramount+ and can be obtainable for digital buy September 27.

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