Apartment 7A is a moribund waste of time. Ironically, if it were just a straight up remake of Rosemary’s Baby, it’d have been more watchable. But instead they base it on some irrelevant backstory and then proceed to basically tell the original story over again.

The flick takes place in the same apartment building as Rosemary’s Baby only without the gauzy ’60s veil over the lens. A dancer down on her luck runs into the not-at-all-Satanic couple from the earlier film and they put her up in an apartment in their not-at-all-Satanic building. And then the same stuff happens to her only with ineffective jump scares and an obvious ticking clock.

I like Rosemary’s Baby as a film about isolation, control, paranoia, and imprisonment. I didn’t like it for blatant and abrupt generic jump scares… but for its mood, its atmosphere, and how it made me want to crawl out of my skin on Mia Farrow’s behalf. This prequel just decides to be a gloomier, darker retread full of the usual scare tactics from dozens of other modern horror movies.

And since most of us know what’s going on and because we know the Satanist plans can’t work out this time, all the mystery and subtly is sapped right out of it. We just wind up waiting around for a bus to come along and el-smasharino (or whatever happens to our lead since we know she’s not the mother of the devil).

The film goes on and on and on… but maybe it doesn’t drag as much if you aren’t familiar with Rosemary’s Baby. And certainly such a person would get a far more modern and infinitely less gauzy film than if they just watched the earlier film. Maybe it’s that select group of people who might get something out of it?

I was almost going with a lower rating until the hilarious goddamn ending. I was giggling and chortling through a familiar scene of old people chanting crazypants stuff… and then I LOLed long and hard at the ultimate resolution. Suck it, Satanists!

Too bad odds of this ending being intentionally funny are vanishingly low. But, still, I got a kick out of it so a little unintentional bump to the rating.

I’m not sure who this flick is for but I hope people unaware of the earlier film find it and enjoy it since I doubt many other people will. Not because Rosemary’s Baby is an awesome movie (though I do thoroughly dig it) but because we know the schtick and this flick just repeats it. Poorly.

Score: 66