Platinum Dunes Remakes 'Rosemary's Baby' So You Won't Have To

If there existed a flow chart of what movies needed remakes, what movies might be inspired remakes, and what movies shouldn't be remade, horror movies would run the gamut. Without question, there are some that need a fresh look (The Fly), while others could be good in the right hands (Dawn of the Dead) and still others should be untouchable (Psycho). Rosemary's Baby falls into that second category; it is neither blasphemy to assume such a notion nor is the movie one that absolutely has to get a modern update. But I would be interested to see what they could do with the paranoia and mysterious beast-baby plot 40 years later. In addition to being a great unused name for a punk band, Rosemary's Baby is top notch old horror, when most of the shock was in your head instead of on the screen. But that was then. Now, Rosemary's Baby will be a Platinum Dunes remake, which means that the same hacks responsible for hacking The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, and The Hitcher, have gotten their hands on this classic, one that transcends its genre. What's really baffling is the logic behind the remake, as dispensed so eloquently by Dunes' Brad Fuller to Shock Till You Drop:

"If we don't do Rosemary's Baby, someone else is. They're not going to pass on that. Being horror fans like we are, we want to take the opportunity to take shot at it rather than read about someone else doing it. All the shit we get for doing these things, it really just comes from being huge fans and wanting to take a shot."

First of all, I'm not sure a lot of companies would remake this, at least not in the cheap assembly line system Platinum Dunes uses. He's right that they get a lot of shit for their remakes (with Friday the 13th, The Birds, and Nightmare on Elm Street still to come), and deservedly so: Their remakes are shit. The company does have its first pair of original horror movies due out within the next year, so hopefully those will be better, but to this point, all we've seen is weak scripts and way too much blood. If that's what they intend to do with Rosemary's Baby, then they've missed the point and can't be considered "huge fans." Hacks, again, would prove to be the appropriate word.