Craig and Samantha Howard (James Purefoy, Heather Graham), desperate for a baby, go to a fertility clinic that artificially inseminates Samantha, adding the blood of The Devil. Businessman and Satanist Earl Sidney (David Hemmings) aids the couple, while Father Carlo (Andy Serkis) attempts to kill the unborn twins to stop a child of Lucifer being born.
Rosemary’s Baby is one of the most overrated genre films; it shocked a generation which wasn’t used to the devil popping up in anything but low-budget affairs. Watching it now, with years of slickly made demonic thrillers to compare it to, it appears as an overly slow, predictable, drab film with very little to say and even less to inspire thought. But it does have an amusing ending which defies old-school expectations, though hardly surprising to anyone who didn’t start with some serious assumptions on how a film about the devil should end. Rosemary’s Baby is a film you suffer through to get to the ending, and how worthwhile the trip is depends on how entertaining those final ten minutes are to you.
Which brings me to Blessed. It is Rosemary’s Baby. It’s set forty years later, has a stalker priest, mentions cloning a lot, and there are twins, but otherwise, it’s Rosemary’s Baby. Well, it has one other change, the ending. The part that made the original enjoyable is missing. So, what we have here is an overly slow, predictable, drab film with very little to say and even less to inspire thought, plus it is lacking a payoff.
It is a chance to see Andy Serkis (the voice and computer capture for Gollum), in a non-digitized form. However, if this is all the onscreen work he can get after the huge success of Lord of the Rings, then he better cling to his digital performances (he wears the motion capture suit again for Peter Jackson’s King Kong).
This is also an opportunity to see Heather Graham play an everyday mother-to-be with little personality. As Graham has demonstrated an ability to play interesting, flamboyant parts, the joy of watching her perform as a tedious woman escapes me. But then she’s not very good at playing dull. With a twinkle in her eye and an ambiguous smile, it felt like she was prepared to burst out with a colorful, twisted touch of excitement. It never happened.