While American Horror Story season 12 is seemingly influenced by a classic ’60s horror movie, the show’s story has already made one vital change to its inspiration. American Horror Story is nothing if not unpredictable. Since its inception, the show has constantly shocked and wrong-footed viewers, leaving few clues as to where the story is headed next. Epitomizing this aspect of the show is American Horror Story: Apocalypse killing off all its heroes midway through the story and starting over with a new plot. However, the approach can also be invigorating and exciting, as evidenced by American Horror Story: Delicate.

When American Horror Story season 12 cast Kim Kardashian in a major role, it may have been easy to assume that this outing would be another ratings grab filled with outlandish twists and stunt casting. However, American Horror Story: Delicate will actually be a departure from the usual formula of the series. Unlike every previous entry of the horror anthology show, season 12’s story will be adapted from a novel. Author Danielle Valentine’s Delicate Condition is a horror novel about an indie actor who becomes convinced that a shadowy force wants to end her pregnancy and that her loved ones can’t be trusted.

American Horror Story: Delicate Makes Its Medical Horror More Explicit Than Rosemary’s Baby

If a lot of that plot summary sounds familiar, that is likely because Delicate Condition and, by extension, American Horror Story season 12 borrow much of their inspiration from Ira Levin’s iconic bestseller Rosemary’s Baby. In that seminal novel and its movie adaptation, the eponymous Rosemary is a homemaker and her husband is an actor, but the rest of the plot remains strikingly similar. However, while American Horror Story season 12’s NYC setting is shared by Rosemary’s Baby, the show’s earliest teaser trailers have already proven that Delicate will diverge from the earlier classic’s story in a few pivotal areas. In Delicate, the doctors are clearly a threat from the start.

In Rosemary’s Baby, the devil-worshiping cult’s influence over the medical establishment isn’t revealed until the novel’s chilling ending. In American Horror Story: Delicate, the connection between the villains and the heroine’s medical career is front and center. The first teaser is filled with ominous nurses wielding syringes filled with spiders as the main character is strapped to an operating table. In contrast, in Rosemary’s Baby, the protagonist goes to a new, strange doctor at the advice of her meddling neighbors. He seems to be a villain working with Rosemary’s neighbors until the ending reveals that even her original friendly, caring doctor was also in on the scheme.

American Horror Story: Delicate Underlines One Major Theme From Rosemary’s Baby

The fact that American Horror Story season 12 gave Kim Kardashian a major role proves that the show will be as campy as ever in Delicate, but this doesn’t mean the series can’t address serious issues. American Horror Story: NYC touched on the traumatic history of the AIDS crisis, and it looks increasingly likely that Delicate will delve into medical trauma even more explicitly than Rosemary’s Baby did decades ago. Judging by the teaser trailer, Delicate’s central character can trust no one, not even medical professionals. That was true for Rosemary, too, but she found this out for herself only in the ending, whereas Delicate’s Anna runs away from nurses in the promotional materials.

Why American Horror Story Season 12 Changing Its Movie Inspiration Is Good

Delicate Condition, the novel the season is based on, has been called an updated spin on Rosemary’s Baby. Thus, American Horror Story season 12’s teased story needed to diverge from the plot of Levin’s novel at least a little to avoid giving away its ending. Rosemary’s Baby has been endlessly influential in the decades since the novel and its adaptation came out and this inevitably means that twists which were cutting edge upon its original release are now predictable. Contemporary viewers would immediately suspect a seemingly normal physician with a squeaky-clean practice of villainy, so there’s no point hiding the nature of the show’s medical establishment.

American Horror Story: Delicate can make it clear from the beginning that its doctors and nurses are up to something nefarious since the series still has plenty of time to introduce other antagonists, villainous co-conspirators, and new twists. If Delicate Condition and its adaptation simply rehashed the plot of Rosemary’s Baby verbatim, the novel and American Horror Story season 12 would be exercises in redundancy. However, by changing the specific plot details of Rosemary’s Baby but holding on to the classic story’s scariest themes and ideas, American Horror Story season 12 can offer a fresh update on the iconic original that does justice to Levin’s bestseller.