Knowing where the story was going, I spent most of “Night Two” searching for the reason NBC wanted to do this remake. It invites the shackles of Roman Polanski’s 1968 masterpiece. With every short-haired, vile smoothie callback, this Rosemary’s Baby does little more than remind us that there is a superior product out there. This wasn’t inevitable. Multiple adaptations of minable works exist. There’s ample room in today’s social climate for revisiting a woman unraveled by her contemporaries’ innumerate iterations of you’re crazy. Here, the husband just says it: “You got a little crazy last night.”
Yes, pardon the secret passage.
This miniseries began with the suicide of a pregnant mother. Satan, with a horned carving of himself on his cane—like a second form of I.D.—shows up in the next scene. Rosemary never wanted duplicity. That’s okay. Any piece of art has a right to its own identity. We wouldn’t want Polanski doing network television. But even more than that, we don’t want network television trying to do Polanski. “Night Two” holds aesthetics that are meant to tap into the auteur. A murder of crows overhead expelling from a tree like a plague. Rosemary eating viscera in silhouetted profile. It’s not derivative; it’s empty. Mimicry may flatter, but this Rosemary saw The Graduate and cried with joy.
“Night Two” is a by-the-books slog through iconographic religious psychosis. It is men versus men with the dark lord by their side. Caught in the middle of it is Rosemary’s womb. Paris is less a setting than a soundstage. The show’s pretty. Michel Amathieu’s camerawork enlarges the city, but the movements are restricted. Claustrophobia by way of limited access is well worn. But it’s dressing. There’s no tension to inform it. We know everyone’s truths. What’s left to discover? In the film, Dr. Hill’s betrayal devastates whatever shreds of hope had survived. It is one of horror’s great turns. Here, we know Rosemary’s right. The doctor, her final hope, is now a fool, not concerned. But the plot gives him no choice because it needs him to make a specific one. The story depends on Rosemary’s shrieks to conjure tragedy. So Zoe Saldana screams.