the groundhog day project

So, take away the Satanists, take away the details of that scene at the end with Rosemary seeing her baby, and what's left? A film about how crazy and hormonal a woman can be when she's pregnant, and how she can have a psychotic break when her child is stillborn. Most of the details that are here still work. People offering advice to a young woman pregnant with her first baby--that's certainly nothing new. A husband making demands on his pregnant wife--not new either. The idea that this is what Rosemary's Baby is about isn't really anything new, either. But, I noticed something yesterday while watching the movie. Now, the main guy's name is, well, Guy, which is plenty generic, and a bit obvious. (I have never read Levin's book, but just learned that Guy's name is made up. His name was Sherman Peden, but he changed it. To have more success as an actor, I guess.) But, Rosemary--not so much. Even if you shorten it to Rose, it's not so generic. Commo...

Some of the best horror deals in very down-to-earth details, mundane themes with a twist toward something extraordinary. Rosemary's Baby --today's film--deals in fears about pregnancy and parenthood. The Shining deals in alcoholism and... parenthood. Poltergeist deals in suburbia and... parenthood. I'm sensing a theme. The Omen films also deal with parenthood, and of course, the end of the world (because children are, in a way, the end of the world... Ask any single person.) Ghost stories like Crimson Peak deal in hidden pasts coming back to haunt the present (and that one has almost nothing to do with parenthood). Even the Hellraiser films deal in a sort of fear of the perverse and our own sexual impulses. (And, there's that thing about motherhood .) And, that's just movies I've watched this past month for this blog. How about some more recent fare? It Follows , for example, takes old slasher-film themes about the dangers of casual sex and updates them wi...

The Omen again. That whole parenting thing--leave that to the side for the moment. But, not too far to the side. The changeling child idea--central to the premise of the film-- does tie back into the parenting. But it also suggests a larger notion of fear of the unknown, specifically fear of foreign unknowns, of foreign influence. I mean, this film puts us in the realm of international politics at the start. Robert Thorn is made the American ambassador to the UK not long after he and his wife get Damien in their lives. Father Brennan points Thorn and Jennings to Italy and then Israel to find, far from the modern trappings of the Thorns' life in England. Seriously, compare the excess of Damien's fifth birthday party to the ruins seen in Israel later in the film. But, the real danger here is in the child influenced by... maybe it's foreign powers, maybe just belief systems to which we do not subscribe ourselves. I was wondering why certain religious themes were promine...