The First Omen Review: Excellent Scares In A Story That Can't Overcome Prequel Pitfalls

Richard Donner’s The Omen is a horror movie with a powerful enough presence in pop culture that even if you haven’t seen the film, you are still probably aware of its biggest story beats – the plot following a pair of parents who slowly come to understand that their son is the Antichrist. This large scale audience awareness was obviously a motivating factor in the development of director Arkasha Stevenson’s The First Omen (as with any 21st century franchise resurrection), but it’s also the biggest issue that plagues the prequel. Though there is an attempt to establish an independent, fresh narrative, one constantly feels aware of invisible hands pushing it all in an obvious direction, and that underlying staleness eventually blossoms as an attempted twist that any savvy movie-goer will see coming right from the start. One follows along in hope that its 119 minute runtime will eventually yield big surprises, but that turns out to be a recipe for disappointment.

It’s a shame, because when the movie really is trying to do its own thing, it frequently finds success. With her feature debut, Stevenson demonstrates a skilled eye for on-screen terror. There are gnarly death-centric set pieces along with clever jump scares that never feel cheap or manipulative, and there is a pull-no-punches attitude in some sequences that will drop your jaw as you watch and wrap your head around the fact that this is a title from The Walt Disney Company.

Nell Tiger Free stars in The First Omen as Margaret Daino, an American Catholic novice who travels to work at an orphanage in Rome as she prepares to take her vows and become a nun. She is given warm support upon her arrival from Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy), who she has known she was a child, and Sister Silvia (Sônia Braga), the orphanage’s abbess, but her encounters with a young girl named Carlita Scianna (Nicole Sorace) offer her experience a different tone.

Margaret learns that Carlita is prone to hallucinations and violent outbursts, often leading her to be restrained and locked up in a space called “The Bad Room.” Having had similar issues as the girl when she was a child, Margaret makes special efforts to help her – though she gains a completely different understanding of the situation when she is approached by an excommunicated priest named Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson) who tells her about a sinister conspiracy at work inside the Catholic Church.

While it has its strengths, The First Omen ultimately can’t get past the pitfalls of prequel storytelling.

Prequels are a tough business. In stories like these, you don’t typically want the audience to be too far ahead of the characters, as that leaves the protagonist perpetually playing catch-up (which can be a boring drag), but that’s unavoidable here: before the thing starts, general movie-goers know that the Antichrist will be born and his name will be Damien. To the credit of The First Omen, there are stretches where it successfully circumvents this natural issue by getting us invested in Margaret’s personal journey, but the endeavor eventually has to take on the job of filling in canon gaps and fitting like a puzzle piece in the continuity, and those efforts sap the life out of the film.

There is a frustrating vacillation. From the very first scene, it seems obvious what The First Omen is gearing up for… but through the first and second acts, there are developments that unfold that make you question your expectations and wonder if the movie is going to attempt something radical. By the time the third act begins, however, those hopes are well-dissipated, and you find yourself more annoyed by the dot-connecting than Margaret’s fate. This isn’t to say that the film doesn’t take a swing at adding something unexpected (and it’s something that opens the door for a sequel), but it fails to take the entire sting out of the disappointment.

There are images in The First Omen that will stay with movie-goers forever.

The First Omen is an underwhelming new entry in the Omen franchise, but where it is a success is demonstrating the tremendous promise of Arkasha Stevenson as an up-and-coming genre talent. The filmmaker has been cutting her teeth in the last decade with wild and freaky stuff on the small screen – helming an episode of Legion, the debut of Brand New Cherry Flavor and the third season of Channel Zero – and she showcases a wonderful talent for upsetting visuals in her first feature.

Smart camerawork and cutting (collaborations with cinematographer Aaron Morton and editors Amy E. Duddleston and Bob Murawski) yield freaky jolts that will have horror fans smiling in the aftermath, but there are also particular sequences that will widen the eyes of even the most jaded and desensitized viewer. There’s a grisly car accident and a horrible immolation to look forward to, but the showstopper is an on-screen birth that is far more graphic than any regular movie-goer would believe it could be… and that’s all I will say about it so that you can have the chance to marvel at it without expectations as I did.

Fans of The Omen franchise won’t find that this provides the exciting franchise reawakening energy provided to horror-lovers in recent years by titles like Halloween, Saw X, Hellraiser, Scream and others, but there are still positives to take away from it. The way the story winds down leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth (and the dramatically cued-up final line is laughably stupid), but there is plenty of talent demonstrated visually that it inspires anticipation for what Arkasha Stevenson sets her sights on next.