The First Omen (2024) – Review

To be honest, neither nunsploitation Omen prequel or dueling demon baby movies were on my 2024 bingo card, but here we are.
While I try hard to avoid compare a new film directly against another and hope to judge it purely on its own merits, the fact that Michael Mohan’s Immaculate was released a mere two prior to the surprise resurrection of the Omen franchise means that not only has The First Omen have to overcome the curse of the horror prequel (both versions of the fourth Exorcist movie: I’m looking at you), but it has some serious competition in the form of Sydney Sweeney’s enjoyably nasty thriller.
Another hurdle exists in the fact that, aside from the truly iconic original, the Omen franchise hasn’t honestly been that great other than some cool, shocking deaths and a charismatic turn by Sam Neill as the older Damien. Still, after three sequels and a predictably forgettable remake, it’s time to go back to the beginning and discover the pre-origins of one of the infamous problem children in horror cinema.

After a very ominous set up that involves two priests, the hint of a terrible conspiracy and a work place accident that would probably pay out a load in compensation if it wasn’t fatal as hell, we are introduced to Margaret, a young novitiate who has arrived in Rome from America to work at an orphanage and take her vows. Met by Cardinal Lawrence, the senior clergyman at the orphanage and her own personal caregiver, he laments that the world is heading into uncertain times, with people leaving the church in droves and political unrest spring up everywhere. While Margaret settles in slightly awkwardly, she befriends the spirited Luz and bonds with the troubled orphan, Carlita, whose mental issues and violent outbursts mirror her own traumatic childhood as an orphan in Massachusetts.
As the time to take her vows steadily approaches, Luz encourages her to head out on the town to have a night of fun before they devote themselves to the cloth completely, but after meeting a nice guy in a bar, Margaret awakes the next day with a hefty hangover, feeling horribly disappointed with herself, but this appears to be something of a triggering moment as the nightmarish visions she used to suffer as a child suddenly resurface, leading her to have ghastly hallucinations. Worse yet, while her brain is misfiring to chilling effect, a string of disturbing events start to occur all around her that are worryingly real.
While she tries to cope with a fellow nun suddenly committing suicide, the arrival of the plainly terrified Father Brennan finally starts to shed some light on things when he reveals that there’s a conspiracy within the church to birth the anti-christ into the world and the focus of their efforts seem to be Carlita.

If I had to wager money – let’s say £666, just to get in the mood – on whether The First Omen could manage to plough through the countless issues a prequel to a stone cold horror classic will undoubtedly face, then I would have thought that my blasphemous was of cash would have slipped right through my fingers. However, it’s my rather surprised pleasure to report that director Arkasha Stevenson not only manages to forge her own path within the constraints of a franchise that’s over comfortably 45 years old, but it still remains very much a Omen movie that manages to provide a few stings in the tail.
Stevenson, a veteran of some noticably funky television such as Legion, Brand New Cherry Flavour and Channel Zero seems wisely locked into generating an aproximation of the gut gnawing tension of Richard Donner’s spectacular original while trying to build up commentaries about faith, the treatment of women within the church and – that old favorite – the right for a woman to have a say what happens to her body.
It’s with this in mind, that i have to admit that The First Omen’s main problems actually come from outside the film thanks to the close proximity and unavoidable similarities to the aforementioned Immaculate that saw Sidney Sweeney run the gauntlet of nunsploitation’s greatest hits. Firstly the main character – who starts off meek only to later find her inner warrior nun – suffers major culture shock in Italy; befriends a more liberated and independently minded peer; gets glared at a lot by the leathery, elder nuns and ultimately finds herself in the middle of a baby orientated conspiracy that galvanises near identical scenes where both heroines rifle through the desk of a mother superior. On top of that, both also contain jump scare triggering nightmare sequences, shock suicides of mentally unhinged colleagues and numerous scenes of cringe inducing births that mercilessly punish the squemish. While I personally find it darkly amusing that some of the most traumatic birth scenes ever contained within horror movies over the last decade have somehow managed to occur barely two weeks apart; some might find that the similarities might spoil their enjoyment while setting of a feeling of devilish deja vu, but the truth is, both deserve to be seen if for no other reason than the twin, lead performances that see both actresses refuse to hold anything back.

So take a bow, Nell Tiger Free, who runs the demonic nunsploitation gauntlet with style as she goes from wide-eyed innocence to outright terror by way of crippling religious guilt. One moment, that’s highly reminiscent of Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, sees her contorting violently in the street as the camera holds on here for eternity and the sheer amount of rage she has to display during the entire runtime is immense. It’s also nice that adding to the impressive 70s ambiance is a string of veteran character actors (Charles Dance, Bill Nighy and Ralph Ineson) to really drive the point home with maximum gravitas.
Ultimately, The First Omen is admittedly derivative – but oddly not of other Omen movies. There’s certainly the string of freakish accidents (all of which are callbacks to the original) that are intricately carried out, but the film owes more to the likes of Rosemary’s Baby than Donner’s more overt slice of satanic panic, but while some aspects may rub uncomfortably against any Damian purists (twists are aplenty that technically don’t contradict what we already know), when the fateful moment happens, and little Damien enters the world, the movie blasts you with Jerry Goldsmith’s original, black mass tinged theme with such intensity, it’s the emotional horror equivalent of Darth Vader going all Oldboy during the climax of Rogue One.

Way better than I ever could have predicted, the film even has the balls to propose a sequel, which is obviously strange considering it was made in 1976; but invoking a second trilogy that could run parallel with the original one feels weirdly seductive (The Not-So-Final Conflict, anyone?). Regardless, whether this particular prophecy comes to pass, someone needs to let Stevenson lose on another horror, pronto.

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