All Of Them Witches: Rosemary's Baby and the real evil that lurks
The 1960s was a time packed full of fear, murder and war. The world was shaken by the Manson murders - one of the biggest true crime stories to hit the news and the Vietnam war still raged on. The world felt empty, angry and people had lost their way.
What we often see over the years is how films (especially horror) become a mirror for what is going on in the world. This is something I really love about the horror genre, it is excellent at capturing the time and becomes a place where the fears of the time are expressed. Rosemary’s Baby does something I hadn't seen horror films do before - it explored the idea of evil hidden in plain sight.
My 80’s/90s horror consumption was dominated by masked men wielding knives, vampires, zombies, werewolves, science experiments gone wrong and animals turned bad. Films often begin their narratives with a spooky old house, a strange family or the sound of a wolf in the distance - you know what you are getting. However, this film hit different. Why? Well let me give you this scenario…
How would we feel if we were casually getting on with life and we suddenly found out that our neighbour was worshipping the devil, you know full on Satanist with herbal concoctions, candles and black hooded cloaks - we would not believe that sweet Beryl from next door burns black candles and incense at midnight. This all sounds ludicrous but it is also terribly unnerving because “they could be anywhere”.
So, take this idea and give it to a young girl. Instead of being frightened of the film, I became interested in its theme. These figures of the occult were lifted out of their pointy hats and their comedic devil forms and presented to us as normal folk. They weren’t horror characters any more. They had jobs, apartments and they looked like Grandma. I always remember a scene from Ghostworld where Enid and Rebecca are obsessing over the couple they believe are Satanists - no black cloaks or demonic red eyes - a little eccentric but nevertheless just normal folk. They could be anywhere, your next door neighbour or a couple who sit in a cafe sipping their coffee. Creepy right?
Roman Polanski is a controversial figure yet his artistic achievement here cannot be denied. He brought a quality to the film that I think was in keeping with what we would say is art house cinema and at the risk of sounding pretentious, I really enjoyed that aspect. I always felt like it stood outside of the traditional horror genre, a little like David Lynch’s Eraserhead - both incredibly odd films that really do play on the psychology of horror rather than a chainsaw to the torso or a disembowelment scene we usually associate with horror.
Polanski brings a disturbing and haunting nightmare to a normal couple who are celebrating milestones in their lives. He is brilliant at making the scenes quiet and eerie but then brings in the chaos when it most needed. The film plays on the real horrors of life, the ones that interrupt our everyday just like war, just like murder and death and if you watch this…Satan.
