I watch horror movies with a sweater pulled over my face. But isn’t that incredible? What is it about this genre that taps into that fight or flight, that visceral turtleneck-stretching impulse to hide from the screen?

I think a good horror movie exemplifies the height of what ‘movie magic’ can do. That is to say, I feel it’s possibly the only genre of film where every single element of the production is just as important as the next – from script to sound design to editing to direction – and when these elements complement each other you get a perfectly harmonic, full-body experience. You are transported not just mentally, but chemically, to a place you can’t escape.

One of my favorite of these inescapable places is the Bramford Building in 1965 – the setting for my favorite film of all time, Rosemary’s Baby. Aside from the billion reasons I love this movie so much, I keep coming back to the root of what makes it feel so claustrophobic, what makes it stick to my sides for weeks after repeat viewings. At the heart of the film is a deeply familiar, feminine fear: being gaslit to the point of mental and physical deterioration, to abandon what you know about yourself because you trust those who are telling you otherwise. And deep within the gaslighting phenomenon lies a smothering sense of betrayal – which is what Rosemary’s Baby plays with so well. From here the film pushes even further, examining what happens when those who gaslight you are doing so to actively cause you harm. As a woman familiar with the tangles of taking care of my body in a world that can barely say ‘vagina’ out loud, I live with this fear in the back of my mind at all times.

This deeper level is where the film starts crafting its not-so different universe, and this is where we find Minnie Castevet. A woman who frightens and disappoints me more than any man in the film, more of a letdown than Guy Woodhouse.

Minnie, played by an effervescent Ruth Gordon, doesn’t even hide in plain sight, she is plain sight. She is New York City – the overbearing, the nosy, the loud, the persistent. She’s pushy in her generosity and eager to scoop Rosemary up with the confidence of a woman whose personal rhythm has matched the city’s for decades. If anyone’s going to acclimate Rosemary to this new life of hers, it’s Minnie.

She practically swallows Rosemary whole from the moment we meet her pinched face through the apartment peephole. And as soon as she’s granted entrance, she fills the place to the brim. She’s in one room, then suddenly the next. Mousy, deferential Rosemary has no choice but to get swept up in this person who clearly feels so comfortable there, so used to life as she’s lived it.

This comfort is a tool Minnie wields too enthusiastically. The same way we find an animated face that sits in the uncanny valley unsettling to look at, we find something unnatural in Minnie’s maternalism. It hurts to admit, but is so obvious: Minnie has ulterior motives. We want to smack those speckled smoothies from Rosemary’s hand and pull the tannis root off her neck. And even the more innocuous red flags are just as red: how can you accept a dinner invitation from someone who asks how much your furniture costs while going through your mail at the same time?

Herein lies one of the movie’s great betrayals. Rosemary suffers in front of us, withering away for reasons she can’t understand – mostly because the men in her life insist that it’s all natural, silly woman, just keep going. We would hope that Minnie, the one offering tangible “remedies” and advice, would take Rosemary under her wing like a mother to a daughter. And yet, even in the most terrifying moments of the film, she contributes to Rosemary’s torment in the same matter-of-fact manner of a lifelong New Yorker placing her morning bagel order.

Rosemary is a vessel, a stepping stone – one to be drugged, raped, fed satanic herbs – until Minnie and the rest of the cult can collect what lies inside and go on with their lives. Minnie’s enthusiasm is a smokescreen, a gluttonous display of false motherhood, and thus the most deflating form of betrayal in the most distinctly feminine horror movie I’ve seen probably ever.