It’s movie math: Take one pregnant woman, add a bunch of shady people, multiply by the natural anxiety that comes with bringing new life into the world, and voila, you’ve got a “Rosemary’s Baby” riff! But while John Lee’s “False Positive” may have seemed — at least initially, thanks to some well-made marketing materials — like some sort of millennial version of the classic horror effort, it doesn’t work on its own merits, let alone as a take on the 1968 feature.
“False Positive” at least succeeds at putting its audience ill at ease, and while that feeling will not abate over the course of its mercifully short 92-minute running time, it’s less the product of crafty filmmaking than innumerable baffling choices.
Lucy doesn’t dig it.
Misdirection abounds, from a series of strange nightmares to creepy visions of blood, but every “creepy” choice mostly registers as another cheap way to cover up a flagging narrative.
Worse yet: there are plenty of intriguing threads to pull here, like that alleged doctor Adrian doesn’t seem know much about actual medicine, or the mysterious way that Lucy comes across a midwife .
Other choices rankle in their own way, again hinting at something far more clever lurking deep under the film’s surface.
Is “False Positive” really meant to send-up or riff on”Rosemary’s Baby”? Surely the cinematic world can that aren’t automatically compared to an unimpeachable classic.