Just in time for Mother’s Day, the heavily promoted NBC 2-part miniseries “Rosemary’s Baby”, starring Zoe Saldana as Rosemary finally aired last night. Though this version is a retelling of the original novel by Ira Levin and not a remake of the film by Roman Polanski, I was still skeptical about whether or not the series would even be able to compare the to the cult horror classic original.
Despite by my reservations and the miniseries’ abysmal rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I decided to give it a try. As a lover and horror and kitsch, I figured at the very best I’d see a good horror film, and at the worst, at least I’d have a good laugh. Plus, I don’t have HBO.
The episode started off very slowly, and I literally found myself watching the clock for about the first 45 minutes. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.
We meet the overly earnest and honest Rosemary and her husband Guy. Their story is pretty similar to the original, but a few elements here and there were changed in order to modernize the narrative. Occasionally, obvious 70’s horror elements were just dropped in a rather clunky manner, eliciting eyerolls and jokes from viewers like me rather than gasps and shrieks.
Towards the end, the episode had me flat out screaming at my television, “Rosemary No!”, “What are you doing”!, “Dammit Rosemary, get out of there”.
And then came that weird sex scene. It was the kind of sex scene that only network television in the United States could give you, especially after showing you a violent bloody stabbing about 45 minutes earlier. I think Rosemary made a sextape. I’m not sure. Kink infused by Satan isn’t exactly NBC’s speciality.
Overall, the episode came in with a whimper and went out with a confusing, devil-baby conceiving bang. So I’ll definitely be watching the second and final installment of the miniseries this Thursday. In case you missed it, watch it on NBC.com.
