2024 is, unsurprisingly, the year of film’s reckoning with the crisis on bodily autonomy. The horror of losing agency over your own body is only growing more real, and the frequency and viciousness of abortion bans across the country are putting into stark relief the truth of how those in positions of power view reproductive bodies. Sex for pleasure is being shamed, while pregnancy is still both reviled for what it does to the body and seen as women’s only real worth.
The double hit of THE FIRST OMEN and IMMACULATE is one of the brightest signals of women making space for the horrific reality of dealing with monstrous forces that seek to cast us aside if we do not bend to their whims. Though markedly similar in plot points and tone, they both handle their respective resolutions in starkly different, equally impactful ways. There is a rage at the core of them that powers them through.
Women telling stories about lack of agency at the hands of everyone around them is one of the most fascinating paths to be revitalized of late, and I will follow it down any path it so chooses to roam. The latest to tackle the issue is perhaps an unexpected angle, yet it feels equally fresh and important. Natalie Erika James’ APARTMENT 7A, which played at the 2024 Fantastic Fest and comes to Paramount+ in less than a week is less a prequel to ROSEMARY’S BABY as it is a peek behind the original’s connective tissue.
It takes, I think, a special kind of knowledge and skill to weave new shock and enrich such a familiar story. Prior to my most recent rewatch, I had all but forgotten the character of Terry Gionoffrio in ROSEMARY’S BABY. Yet in the hands of Natalie Erika James—and through Julia Garner’s performance—Terry is newly revitalized as an ambitious young woman who will do “just about anything” for the world to know her name. Following an accident that leaves her body and dance career crippled, Terry falls into the Castevets’ clutches. Though of course for a while everything seems too good to be true, she never quite loses her wary edge that tells her something isn’t quite right.
As Terry digs deeper into the mystery of the Bramford, we’re taken through a near-inverse of Guy and Rosemary’s fate. Terry wants to be a star of the stage as much as Guy does on screen, but she isn’t quite willing to sacrifice the people she cares about most, or her own vision of herself.
APARTMENT 7A is a visually beautiful, shocking twist on a horror classic that examines loss and control of female agency, twisting the lens into a dark reclamation of power at all costs. Dianne Wiest’s turn as Minnie Castevet is mountingly sinister as the film goes on, heightening the cat and mouse game of manipulation between her and Terry, and retroactively making Minnie an even darker character than before.
You may know the moves at play here, but despite its confines APARTMENT 7A is out to make its mark on the world and ensure that none of us forget the story of Terry Gionoffrio again.
Tags: Apartment 7A, Fantastic Fest 2024, Film Festivals, Immaculate, Ira Levin, Natalie Erika James, Rosemary's Baby, The First Omen
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