Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, a horror cult classic. The story is actually about a cult; an occult kind of cult. Not the Manson-family kind of type but the real elite and secret society kind of occult. I wished that I had read this one earlier. It’s suspenseful from the beginning and holds the suspense reasonably well towards the end.
Rosemary and her husband, Guy, are looking for an apartment in New York. Actually, when we first meet them in the story, they have just got the lease for a spacious and nice apartment. However, on the same day, they hear that there is room available in the old Bramford building which Rosemary loves. She begs Guy to cancel the first apartment and get this one instead. Of course, she gets what she wants.
In the first half of the book, after just getting the apartment, there is a scene wherein Rosemary is called by her sister, who she didn’t speak to for years, she is worried about Rosemary. I found that part very touching. There are more omens about the apartment which Rosemary misses. And then there are the neighbours. Rosemary and Guy befriend a friendly and old couple who lives next to them. The couple invites them for dinner, interacts a lot with them and even treats them as their family. Slowly they are getting more and more invasive.
The character of Rosemary is nicely written. It was not difficult to sympathise with her and understand her inner thoughts. Her husband, on the other hand, comes over as a real jerk. They are a young couple, just at the start of their life together. There are conversations about their future and implies about expanding the family. All is well until it isn’t. Is it the fault of the apartment or was this marriage doomed from the beginning? Things really go south when Rosemary becomes pregnant. Guy is often away from home and the friendly neighbours next door start to overstep her boundaries.
This story is a great example of a haunted house that is not haunted by the dead but by the living. The building itself attracts the wrong type of people. Like Shirley Jackson would call it: the house is vile and sick, just by itself. If you are into books about haunted or weird houses, like I am, then this is a good start into the subgenre.
Its fair to say that I loved reading this book, I even gave it four and a half stars as a rating, but there are some negative parts in the story as well. First, there is Guy; a horrible character. This is not a fault of the book, of course, he has to be this way for the story to work. The problem lies in Rosemary herself because she accepts this kind of treatment from him. It makes her character weaker than it had to be. Not only does she accepts his mistreatments, she also goes along with the neighbours for a long time while they ignore her opinions and break through her bounderies. And then, there is the ending… I also found it weak and unrealistic. It could have been a great book if the ending was a bit different.
While reading Rosemary’s Baby, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’ve already experienced this uneasy atmosphere before in a Netflix horror show; Archive 81. Even though the show is not a direct adaption of the book, there are many similarities between the two; witchcraft and the occult, secret societies, old buildings, rituals, and more.
It is difficult to find an interesting horror show or adaptation, they usually fall flat compared to the (original) stories. But once in a while, I find a dark gem on Netflix that I have to binge watch of course. If you thinking about reading Rosemary’s Baby or watching Archive 81, I would recommend combining these two activities. There are also many film adaptions of this book, but I think that Archive 81 is far better at painting the atmosphere.
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