One of my all time favorites.

Just perfect...

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I think Agnieszka Holland did an interesting job on directing a film with unavoidable comparison to the Polanski film of the same name. Cinematography by Michel Amathieu is well lit and looks professional. The problem that I have is that such horror film, thriller, and such look like cheap CW television shows when not filmed on film stock. That is my problem, but I just cannot adjust to the look of Gothic story painted on such a canvas.Otherwise, Zoe Saldana (Rosemary) hands in her usual above board acting job, but I must admit that I never liked Mia Farrows work, I found her to be without depth. So Ms. Saldana did not have to reach far, into her vast acting repertoire, to out act shallow Farrow, nevertheless she gave the part a good shove in the right direction. Patrick J. Adams (Guy), on the other hand, had to compete with John Cassavetes who was amazing in the role. He did not really rise to it, but his part was limited to very few emotions...which I did not feel he really reached, but it did not really distract from the film's plot.That's it for comparisons to the Polanski flick, other than I live across the street from the Dakota and it will always be the Rosemary's Baby building to me. The building in the film has an equally eerie facade and the inside with its maze of connecting rooms create a sinister set from Ms. Saldana to explore. OK that is enough comparisons!!! It is hard, is it not ? Taking on a classic film and putting it on television makes it impossible not to compare.As far as subject matter, does it really fit today's sensibilities. Whereas the Polanski film places loose with the supernatural overtones, this film jumps right in to all the trimmings of a full-out horror tale. It is a tragedy where the hero is consumed by the evil it seemed innocent enough to overcome. The hero is not saved by innocence, she is destroyed because of it. The underlining theme of both the book and this film (not so much in Polanski's tale) is betrayal. Rosemary is ultimately betrayed by her new friends, her apartment, her husband and finally herself. She is dammed. Does that make sense in a secular world where religion is greatly deflated ? Maybe not everyone's cup of tea anymore. Finally, this was produced by Saldana and her family. Perhaps that was too much, in the end, for her to chew.

As a huge fan of Ira Levin's novel and Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby", I will admit this mini- series was better than I expected, but that does not mean I thought it was good. The acting overall was pretty decent, except for Zoe Saldana, who did a very impressive job with her role as Rosemary. I do not think I can say she was better than Mia Farrow, but she did a great job overall. I was really impressed with the cinematography and the camera work throughout the film. The environments were always pretty well lit and the Paris setting looked absolutely beautiful. Most of the credit here goes to the director Agnieszka Holland. Unfortunately a good director does not mean a good script. The teleplay was co-written by Scott Abbot, someone relatively new in show business, and James Wong. James Wong is the director behind one of the worst movies of all time "Dragonball: Evolution", and the writer of the torture porn franchise "Final Destination". Its dumb script brings down the movie, but just being a remake really brings it down. "Rosemary's Baby" is a story that was completely ahead of its time. It is however far behind our time. I'm not saying it is not a good movie anymore; it is still an amazing movie. The movie came out way before I was born and it is still one of my favorites, but the story has been ripped off so many times, to modern viewers it may seem too familiar to them. Just a few months ago a movie about a satanic pregnancy came out called "Devil's Due". Another came out just yesterday called "Delivery: The Beast Within". And because the original "Rosemary's Baby" had such a shocking ending, there is no excitement left for a remake. There is also nothing to add to the story to change because Roman Polanski's masterpiece was extremely loyal to Ira Levin's novel. The only difference between the two is Rosemary's dream sequence. Both are portrayed very differently but in the end the same thing happens. The rest of the movie is nearly identical to the book. There are a few minor differences here and there, but no major changes were made that affected the overall story. Now that I have talked about why it shouldn't have been remade, I need to talk about the mistakes in the remake itself. The mini-series does not understand how to be subtle. Subtlety is what made the original so good. To some it may be slow but it is necessarily slow. The audience is given subtle hints that tell them about the Castevets' true nature. These hints leave you wondering, but in the end could just be random coincidences. In the mini-series it tells you distinctly that the Castevets worship Satan and want Rosemary's baby. It even tells you the twist that even Rosemary's husband was a part of it as a lazy attempt of making Guy Woodhouse's character more "sympathetic". When a character dies it not only shows them dying but it makes it obvious that their death was caused by the Castevets. And then there's moronic stuff like the Castevets giving Rosemary a black cat, Roman always wearing black and an ear-piercing, and Rosemary seeing some random "creepy" looking guy who is supposed to be Satan (This list could go on). This kind of stuff is added because James Wong thinks you are too dumb to know that the Castevets worship Satan. In the end, is the script really to blame? Not entirely. The teleplay is really boring and treats you like you're stupid, but the studio could have picked a worse writer. Ira Levin himself could have written the teleplay and this would still be a bad mini-series. I feel like Agnieszka Holland tried her best and I cannot imagine how bad it would be if someone like James Wong was chosen to direct it. The point I am trying to make is that this should not have been remade, but unfortunately greedy entertainment studios want money.

ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) Polanski's satanic chiller delivers a masterclass in creeping paranoia and growing unease. It pulls off that elusive achievement, the one whereby most of the action takes place in daylight hours in contemporary New York yet still managing to be eerie and spine tingling. The director knows his Hitchcock well and exploits accordingly whilst imposing his own singular stamp of identity throughout. The integration of bizarre arcane dream sequences and surreal events with a wholly modern environment helps form the spiritual core of this truly satisfying urban horror film. Technically and emotionally, it's a winner, and the years have done little to diminish its power.As in REPULSION (1965) before it and THE TENANT (1976) after it, the apartment (block) setting is as much a character as anything or anyone else. Across this concrete canvas, deftly, and in common with those other two films, ROSEMARY'S BABY manipulates audience sensibilities through recurrent interchanging beliefs – from this is really happening, to this is all in her mind, to this is really happening, to this is all in her mind, and so on. The ending is suitably creepy and haunting and will stay with you.So, it's cool, stylish, thrilling, scary, suspenseful – good stuff. I haven't seen it for a couple of years, but intend to revisit soon.Why bring it up? Ah, well, because I just sat through... ROSEMARY'S BABY (2014)...a 240 minute TV Mini-Series in two parts. And this is a diabolical travesty. For the most part, it seems to be intended as a showcase for the dubious acting talents of Zoe Saldana. Ms Saldana takes the central role of Rosemary. She also produces the show along with two of her family.In all honesty, Mia Farrow, who featured in the original, irritates me as an actress in ways that cause me to actively avoid films in which she appears. Apart from ROSEMARY'S BABY, that is, in which her cutesy, whiney, elfin, borderline-anorexic, drippy, fragile, neurotic flower-child persona fits the role and the film and the time to absolute perfection. In anything else, I have to avert my eyes, but in RB she's the ideal choice.Zoe Saldana is very pretty to look at. Outside of that, she irritates me here even more than Farrow in any film that isn't RB . Every other sentence she speaks is punctuated by a nervous and incongruous giggle that becomes really annoying after the first ten times it manifests. And it never stops. Just when you think it's gone, it pops up again. It's the most unnerving and affecting thing about this whole venture. I don't know how much creative control the girl had, but someone should have at least advised her to stop with the giggling every other line as it doesn't effectively represent dramatic punctuation. Maybe they did. Maybe they got fired for it. Lucky them.RB 2014 is one of the most sterile pieces of work I've seen for a long time. It's a resolutely flat, monotone one chord visual drone that is filmed without style, panache, flair or meaning. The script is mundane, the performances are mediocre and there is very little by way of tension or suspense. Actually, that's an exaggeration. There's nothing by way of tension or suspense.The original didn't really need overt special effects to make a point or illustrate anything. This version uses them sporadically – computerised hallucinations, flies, blood, gore, viscera, fire, scalded flesh, etc. It's all amateurish stuff, half-heartedly rendered, and fails to add any life or interest. Worse still, the trajectory of the fates of most of the characters is signposted in the most obvious ways.The one bright spot was seeing Carole Bouquet in a prominent role. She looks a little faded around the edges these days, but remains something of a vision of stylish beauty.Some might wonder why I watched it. Why I stuck with it until the bitter end – which, by the way, turned out to be a jaw-droppingly mindless conclusion consisting of a shot of a portly baby in a pram with luminous blue contact lenses blazing like lasers in place of his eyeballs. And this is scary and disturbing how, exactly? As opposed to laughable?Recently I have been watching HANNIBAL and FARGO and enjoying them. Good quality stimulating and intriguing US TV. HANNIBAL especially pushes the envelope in tone, style and content, with humour so black, serrated and malevolent it almost leaves bite marks. I had an idea that RB might be up to the same standard. Got that wrong.Stayed till the end because I'm a stickler. And an optimist. Didn't get any better. More fool me, perhaps.

I am a huge fan of the original movie by Polanski so I concede I am biased in my opinion of this mini series which I just finished watching, and felt compelled to write a brief review."Rosemary's Baby" (2014) should have never been made. Never mind my feeling that originality and risk no longer exists in the corporate Hollywood machinery, that's been suffocated years ago. I was hoping that Agnieszka Holland might inject something new or interesting into this story, alas, that did not happen. There were a lot of deaths, somewhat gruesome, and totally unnecessary and felt very frivolous. An unforgettable scene in the original where Rosemary rips into a raw steak was rewritten: with the steak turned into chicken guts. All I could think of was salmonella; I also know a few women who were pregnant and most of them were super careful when prepping chicken. The scene felt ridiculous. In fact, I felt that way throughout the whole time I watched this mini series.I wouldn't recommend this version to anyone.