50 Movies Where Evil Won

Plot: Rosemary (Mia Farrow), a newly-married expectant mother living in New York, becomes suspicious that her neighbours are part of a coven, one which has sinister intentions for her baby.

This profoundly unsettling horror flick is an intelligently ambiguous piece of psychological horror for most of its run-time. Is Rosemary experiencing an episode of psychosis? Or is she right about her neighbours? 

There are various clues supporting Rosemary's theory, but these are subtle enough to keep viewers doubting right up until the very end, where it turns out that Rosemary's 'far-fetched' conclusions... were absolutely correct. The neighbours are indeed members of a coven. 

In the movie's most brilliant sequence, Rosemary 'dreams' of being assaulted by a demonic figure and, as she eventually realizes, that was entirely real and not a dream at all. 

She is horrified when she sees her deformed baby, and the coven members proudly proclaim that she has given birth to the son of the Antichrist. It also turns out that her husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), is a member, too. In return for letting them use his wife, the coven used their supernatural abilities to further Guy's acting career. There have been many bad husbands in horror movies, but he's got to be one of the very worst. 

It's a shockingly bleak ending that'll leave audiences feeling like they've been punched in the gut, and it reaffirms Rosemary's Baby as a horror classic for the ages; the pregnancy horror that its many imitators could only dream of being.