Apartment 7A, on Paramount+

In Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Terry Gionoffrio was an in-joke. The troubled woman was one of Minnie and Roman’s Castevets’ pet projects, whom the title character initially confuses for Victoria Vetri, the actress who played her (under the name Angela Dorian, which Vetri also used for her Playboy modeling). Now Gionoffrio gets her own film, a prequel that sometimes overlaps with Polanski’s classic. Of course, her arrangement with the Castevets will be just as Faustian in Natalie Erika James’ Apartment 7A, which premieres Friday on Paramount+.

Gionoffrio came to New York with a dream and a talent for dance, but neither gets her very far, even before she takes a bad landing on her ankle. Desperate for a part, she came to the Bramford (a.k.a. the Dakota), hoping to plead her case with Alan Marchand, a Broadway producer living there. Instead, she faints into the arms of the Castevets, who immediately recognize the potential usefulness of her youth and desperation.

Out of the goodness of their hearts, they offer to put her up in their spare apartment, rent-free. They clearly have boundary issues, but Gionoffrio simply cannot refuse. It turns out to be a heck of a deal when Marchand casts her for the chorus line of his latest production. Her luck is changing, but she still gets bad vibes from the Bramford, especially when Gionoffrio starts to suspect someone secretly enters her apartment when she is not there.

It might seem sacrilegious to make a prequel to a classic like Polanski’s film, but there was already a made-for-TV sequel in 1976 and a miniseries in 2014 that adapted both Rosemary’s Baby and Ira Levin’s sequel, Son of Rosemary, so ample precedent has already been set. As it turns out, James and co-screenwriters Christian White and Skylar James do an excellent job on the micro level, rather seamlessly weaving the narrative of this film around the unforgettable events of the 1968 classic.

However, they are not as successful on the macro level, failing to land the moments of feverish weirdness and terrifying demonic dread that made Polanski’s film so powerful. Frankly, the tension only really elevates during an apartment invasion sequence that is entirely human in nature.

Julia Garner’s presence also underwhelms as the distressed Gionoffrio (maybe you really can say she’s no Victoria Vetri). However, Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally are a scream channeling the great Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer as the Castevets. They are truly unsettling, in a low-grade alarming, constant sense of danger kind of way.

Apartment 7A is considerably better than you probably assumed. James, who previously helmed Relic and the impressive short Creswick, has a talent for milking tension from sinister domestic settings (and in the case of Creswick, literally from furniture). That skillset well serves this material. James and the design team also recreate a period look and textures consistent with your memories of the original Rosemary’s Baby. It just needs some bigger scares. Recommended to fans, for the creepy Minnie-and-Roman show, Apartment 7A starts streaming Friday (9/27) on Paramount+.