By: Paul Farrell

Bodies move gracefully with intense and immaculate precision. Dance, after all, is a discipline, its craft dictated by strategic maneuver. Terry Gionoffrio is nothing if not a dancer. But accompanying such a contract is the high-risk, high-reward possibilities of success and failure — a dream realized or a future destroyed.

Apartment 7A begins some months before the events of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), focusing on the poor, young soul who plummeted from the building where Rosemary Woodhouse had recently taken up residence. Directed by Natalie Erika James — who helmed the emotionally captivating and truly haunting Relic (2020) — the film acts as a careful, self-aware precursor to its progenitor, hardly reinventing the text but delivering the eerie atmosphere and hungrily creeping evil that infected the original’s runtime.

Terry Gionoffrio has come to New York to seek fame and fortune as a dancer on the Broadway stage, but her crippling injury in the opening sequence all but assures that her dream will go unrealized. Having more in common with Guy Woodhouse than Rosemary, Terry soon finds herself in the company of Minnie and Roman Castevet. The elderly couple embraces her immediately, providing her with free lodging, miracle medication, and the kinds of connections in the entertainment business that could finally fulfill the fantasy that she had so recently abandoned.

Julia Garner plays Terry with innocence, both put on and truthful, allowing her vulnerabilities to be exploited while struggling with the consequences, both above and below the surface. The Castevets are brought back to life by Kevin McNally and Dianne Wiest. Both do a tremendous job of reintroducing the familiar villains to the screen, but Dianne Wiest is the standout — embodying Ruth Gordon’s 1968 performance while providing it with unique flourishes, and reveling in the idea that, this time around, the viewer knows precisely who the villains are and what they are up to from the very first frame.

The film is peppered with interesting and complimentary performances, such as Marli Siu’s Annie, Julia’s best friend and confidant, and Jim Sturgess’ Alan Marchand, the successful Broadway producer and gaslighting aficionado who takes advantage of Julia and serves as the central romantic figure in the protagonist’s dark rise. There is no shortage of compelling characterizations, all of which fit into the puzzle of how and why Julia is taken in by the evil cult of success and power and how that same collective fails to realize its own devilish goals.

The fatal flaw in this whole affair is that despite the craft, performances, and storytelling on display, the film is exactly what one would assume it to be, leading up to the very moment that the Castevets set their sights solely on Rosemary Woodhouse. There is a lack of inventiveness and excitement in the story’s dawning conclusion. And while it is fascinating to watch a train wreck play out in real-time, there is little left to the imagination and even less offered in terms of expanding the meaning or context of the franchise as a whole.

Regardless, Apartment 7A is an incredibly well-made and engaging picture, employing exaggerated sets and disorienting dream sequences in a manner befitting the experience presented in the first film. As Terry’s ever-contorting reality grows more and more obtrusive, so too does the film eke under the sensibilities of normality and goodness. By the end, when Terry reaches the point of understanding that mirrors Rosemary’s in her own final act, the viewer has no choice but to understand and empathize with the only logical decision Terry has remaining.

Dance is a discipline. A craft. Dance, and indeed life, is dictated by movement. No matter what, a dancer always has a choice in how they move and where they go next. In fact, sometimes, that’s all one has. Whether that choice realizes the dream or destroys the future is in the eye of the beholder, but it seems clear which option Terry chose in the end.