Evil has taken many memorable forms at the movies, be it Tim Curry covered in makeup for Ridley Scott’s Legend or the IT miniseries, Al Pacino’s sharply dressed villain from Devil’s Advocate, or far less humanized entities. But one of the most iconic, and most unsuspecting, has to be young Damian Thorne - the boy who would become the Antichrist, in Richard Donner’s horror classic The Omen. And we now have our first big look at the next chapter in that twisted saga.
The 2024 movie schedule has us returning to the demonic tale through the upcoming horror movie The First Omen, which is set to detail the story behind the doomed boy’s arrival. Rather than immediately filling the movie’s marketing with jump scares, the first trailer released by 20th Century Studios instead trades in actual dread and mystery. And to be honest, I’m actually kind of pumped for that.
Director/co-writer Arkasha Stevenson tackles the conspiracy to make sure that Damian can be brought into the world, all while a young nun (Nell Tiger Free) tries to get to the bottom of the matter. This new footage shows glimpses of the signs pointing to the truth, and the atmosphere is palpable and absolutely unsettling, especially when that conspiracy is described as follows in the synopsis for The First Omen:
When a young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, she encounters a darkness that causes her to question her own faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate.
So yeah, The First Omen may not look or sound overtly sinister at all, especially when you kind of know how things are going to go for this a closed-ended prequel. (Unless, of course, 20th Century Studios is planning to pull a Cruella and rewrite history to the point where new remakes and sequels can be explored.) Either way, things don't seem so rosy for Nell Tiger Free's character; no matter how much experience she has as being a supernatural nanny on Apple TV+'s Servant.
It’s been a bit of a wait for this origin story of young Damian’s origin story, as The First Omen’s 2016 announcement kicked off a pretty lengthy development process. Then again, considering that the 2019 Disney/Fox merger was probably ongoing at the time, part of those delays may have been on the business side.
In fact, another legacy-quel to a Fox catalog title finds itself being released in theaters in this very same year; thanks to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes being set to drop this Memorial Day. It appears that the wheels are turning smoothly enough at this corporate giant that now the 20th Century Studios side of the house is benefitting.
With The First Omen acting as the opening statement of digging into that storied vault of titles, outside of that time Disney bought Lucasfilm Ltd. to make Star Wars history, there’s no telling what could come next. Though there’s still time for Apes to make a name for itself, it’s going to be mighty important to see what The First Omen does in theaters; especially on the back the news that Disney wasn’t 2023's top grossing studio, breaking an eight year winning streak .
As far as first looks go, The First Omen promises something properly foreboding and creepy, to the point where it could be one of those prequels where you kind of forget where everything has to end. If this movie sticks that landing, it'll be a dark miracle indeed, but the type that doesn't doom humanity to a thousand years of darkness.
We’ll see what happens when this Omen falls upon theaters, starting on April 5, 2024. However, if you'd like to put your Hulu subscription to good use, at the time of this writing you can revisit 1976's The Omen through the power of streaming.
