How to Find a Great Apartment in New York: Rosemary's Baby as Urban Horror Anonymous College

The horror genre is one of the most established genres in film history. One of the first movies was Thomas Edison’s Frankenstein which featured a Frankenstein creature that was decidedly different than the iconic Frankenstein played by Boris Karloff. Many of the early silent films were classics in the horror genre including Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In this paper, I will discuss the horror genre and use the 1968 Roman Polanski movie Rosemary’s Baby as a case study.

The Horror Genre

Horror is one of the most popular genres in motion pictures. In the early days, most horror movies were based on the Gothic and Romantic novels of the 19th century including Dracula and Frankenstein. Since the silent movie phase, horror has remained a steady draw with several subgenres rising and falling depending on the dominant societal anxieties. In short, horror movies depict the most dominant terrors in a metaphorical manner in order to allow the audience to deal with their fears. “At their most effective, horror films will fuse elements of realism and terror in a balance so delicate it can be easily, and irreversibly, upset by the simplest error in judgment by the filmmakers” (Mohsen).

Many academics and writers including...