(aka Rosemary's Baby) I saw this movie by Polanski (the director's masterpiece «The Pianist») in a certain issue of «Watching the Movie» in high school, and I remember that the film review left me with a weird impression. It's so scary that as someone who doesn't feel comfortable watching horror movies on a regular basis, I've been afraid to watch this movie.
After watching it over the weekend, I found that it is not the same as the horror in my memory. It is a typical psychological horror, but it is very different from Japanese and Korean horror films. Polanski very subtly takes the suspense as the main line and renders its effect throughout the film. Although the whole film revolves around the baby, the real face of the baby is never seen from the beginning to the end, but it gives the audience countless opportunities to think that they can witness the answer with their own eyes, but in the end it is all clicked, and people can't complain, I think this arrangement may be it's the best.
Although it is a horror film related to Satanism, it is actually more about criticizing male power and exposing the weakness of women. However, the most striking part of this film is the sensational cult mass murder that it caused at the time. The key murder case is Polanski himself. The film was released in 1968 and received a lot of attention. The reviews were mixed. Most of the praise was for the film itself, and the criticism was mainly from the church or Satanism supporters. All in all, the film brought great success to Polanski's career. One year after the film was released, Polanski's wife invited four friends to her villa for a weekend when she was more than eight months pregnant, and was killed by the cult leader Manson and his followers. Polanski's pregnant wife was brutally murdered. He was stabbed more than 10 times in the ground, and several other victims were also bloody and horrific. Polanski himself was lucky enough to escape the tragedy, which shocked the nation at the time, by filming in London. It's hard not to connect the case with the film, especially when it ends with Rosemary holding a knife, but instead of stabbing the baby to death, she chooses to give in to fulfill the responsibilities and obligations of a mother. It appears that Manson used a murder technique that Polanski did not use in the film on his family in order to express his protest against Polanski's insult to the cult.
Polanski is known for his sexual assault case, which has been accused by multiple women. He is indeed a typical tragic character in life, but in the world of movies, he is an unquestionable master of dark suspense.
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