Director Arkasha Stevenson delivers a creepy and dread filled religious horror in The First Omen, a prequel to the 1976 classic that chronicles the birth of the antichrist with suitably ominous atmosphere, nightmare inducing imagery, and a committed performance from Nell Tiger Free.
The First Omen has no business being as good as it is. More in league with recent elevated horror films such as Hereditary and The Witch as opposed to the formulaic jump scare offerings of The Conjuring universe, this sixth movie in the Omen franchise is the best since the Richard Donner directed first film that introduced the world to child antichrist Damien Thorne.
The success of The First Omen is due to director Arkasha Stevenson. Unlike David Gordon Green and his mangled legacy sequel The Exorcist: Believer, Stevenson provides the essential required respect to the legacy of the original Omen movie while adding her own flourishes, resulting in not only a visually arresting and exciting addition to the underachieving franchise, but one that ups the stakes in this saga of evil rising in an increasingly secularised world.
It is all a bit of a miracle considering the central plot of The First Omen is rather ho-hum with its regurgitation of the corrupt-forces-in-the-church trope that we have seen countless times. Set in 1970s Rome, The First Omen stars Nell Tiger Free as Margaret, a novice nun from Massachusetts who is transferred to Rome where she is to take her final vows. Working in an orphanage, Margaret is drawn to Carlita (Nicole Sorace) a disturbed child whose mysterious past reveals a sinister plot to bring forth the birth of the antichrist.
Stevenson leans into the weirder aspects of the Omen story to create a religious horror mystery that blends the paranoia of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby with the psychological madness of Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession. Nightmare inducing imagery and body horror gore (including a birth scene sure to make many wince) combine with rich period detail and stellar photography by Aaron Morton (Evil Dead). Stevenson takes thing up a notch with retro-style camera movements and framing that will please fans of 70s horror.
Nell Tiger Free delivers an astonishingly good performance as a fragile soul who undergoes a physical, spiritual, and psychological journey through hell. In turn Margaret is a character worth caring about and investing in, raising those dramatic stakes so the horror can follow suit with dread-filled power. Great too is Ralph Ineson as Father Brennan, the ex-communicated priest who takes it upon himself to investigate those who wish to bring hell on Earth, Ineson’s rich timbre voice music to horror lovers’ ears.
A disappointing conclusion that prioritises franchise opportunities over good storytelling mars what could have been a new horror classic. As it stands, though, The First Omen delivers us from the tedium of another overwrought gothic horror movie for something much more substantial and scarier.
