Funereal Plots
Horror Cinema Reviews
Matthew M. Bartlett

The First Omen

Director – Arkasha Stevenson

Writers – Arkasha Stevenson, Tim Smith, Keith Thomas, story by Ben Jacoby

When someone says, “Have you seen the first Omen?” you’d be forgiven for thinking they were talking about The Omen, that is, the first movie in the Omen franchise. And what a movie that was. It feels like it’s an evil movie, like it enthusiastically takes evil’s part. Everyone who stands in the way of the devil’s plan for world domination is dispatched brutally, to a pumping soundtrack of ecstatic chanting in Latin. No one has a chance. Evil prevails. It’s a slasher and the devil and his minions are the implacable, unstoppable, comically cruel killers. The same goes for Damien: Omen 2 and The Final Conflict, the latter of which goes harder than most modern horror flicks when it throws in an infanticidal subplot.

Forget Star Wars – this is the original trilogy!

Anyway, they’re not actually talking about the first Omen. They’re talking about The First Omen, a prequel to…the first Omen. As you may recall, in the first Omen (um, 1976), a pregnant woman loses her baby, but a wicked hospital chaplain persuades her husband to pull the old switcheroo and presents her with a different baby, one whose mother died in childbirth. This baby is the new coming of the Antichrist. Because of course he is. And his name is Damien.

Because of course it is.

The First Omen (2024, stay with me) is the prequel which gives us, whether we want it or not, the story of the mother who died in childbirth. The mother, whose name is Margaret, is played by Nell Tiger Free in a compelling, performance, one of the saving graces. She says everything with her eyes, and the brute physicality of her work recalls that of Isabelle Adjani in Possession (1981), which, incidentally, also stars Sam Neill, who would also play Damien as an adult in The Final Conflict (also 1981).

The cast has some impressive actors who are criminally underutilized. Ralph Ineson plays Father Brennan, who is on the side of the angels (and thus is doomed); Bill Nighy is Cardinal Lawrence, who is a baddie, and is also doomed.

The plot: Margaret uncovers a sinister (and markedly absurd) conspiracy when she begins work at an Italian orphanage. The church’s scheme is to resurrect the Antichrist in order to make the wayward youth of the day turn back to the church. And, to make it even more fun, the devil must mate with his own spawn. There is some confusion as to exactly who that spawn is, but we’ve included enough spoilers here as it is.

One of the hallmarks of the 70s-80s Omen franchise is the brutally spectacular kills. The First Omen, rather than come up with its own kills, just uses the same ones from the original franchise, albeit slightly modified. In The Omen (1976), Father Brennan is killed when he’s impaled by a lightning rod. In The First Omen, Father Harris, who alerts Brennan to the conspiracy in the first place, is hit with a falling pipe, which creases his cranium. In The Omen, a nanny the forces of evil need out of the way jumps, noose around her neck, from a balcony, crashing into a window. In The First Omen, a character does the same exact thing, but lights herself on fire beforehand (which also recalls a scene from The Final Conflict where a would-be assassin catches on fire while dangling on a wire from a television studio ceiling). In Damien – Omen 2, a character who’s discovered Damien’s jackal DNA is bisected by a falling elevator wire. In The First Omen, a character who tries to warn Margaret is cut in half by a truck.

Besides the aforementioned performance of the lead actor and a couple of jump scares that are actually effective (a rarity!), there’s not much to recommend here. It’s streaming on Hulu, which has helpfully also made available the original trilogy. If you must watch this, follow it up with those. I saw them when I was much younger, and I appreciate them even more now.