Movie Review: THE FIRST OMEN

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: April 5th, 2024 / 02:54 AM

THE FIRST OMEN movie poster | ©2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Rating: R
Stars: Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Sonia Braga, Tawfeek Barhom, Maria Caballero, Bill Nighy, Nicole Sorace
Writers: Tim Smith & Arkasha Stevenson and Keith Thomas, story by Ben Jacoby, based on characters created by David Seltzer
Director: Arkasha Stevenson
Distributor: 20^th Century Studios
Release Date: April 5, 2024

It’s tough to figure out how to rate THE FIRST OMEN. Taken completely on its own – that is, blotting out any expectations that OMEN in the title bring to it – it feels a bit like a ‘70s Italian horror movie.

This is partly because THE FIRST OMEN is set in 1971 Italy. An opening sequence with a colorful stained-glass window and later scenes with groups of ominous women recall Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA, although THE FIRST OMEN is a bit more contained by comparison.

Young American novitiate Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) arrives in Rome to join a convent/all-girls orphanage where she is to take her vows. Margaret’s sponsor is Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy), an avuncular type who has known Margaret since her own days as a child at a Catholic orphanage in Massachusetts.

Margaret is in the mold of THE SOUND OF MUSIC’s Maria – ready to make friends, eager to please, sincerely devout. She feels a special bond with the orphanage’s problem child Carlita (Nicole Sorace), a twelve-year-old who draws disturbing pictures and occasionally bites people. Margaret thinks Carlita’s behavioral problems stem from the stern punishment meted out by the abbess, Sister Silva (Sonia Braga).

Meanwhile, Margaret is battling what she believes are hallucinations. When she is approached by defrocked Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson), who tells her a wild tale of an attempt to bring the Antichrist into the world, Margaret at first dismisses him, but then …

THE FIRST OMEN Retro Movie Poster | ©2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

THE FIRST OMEN is expressively acted. Most of the jump scares are fake-outs, but it has more extended moments of disturbance where we know something awful is going to happen, and then it winds up being perhaps even more awful than we were expecting.

Director Arkasha Stevenson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Tim Smith and Keith Thomas from Ben Jacoby’s story, has a good grasp of how to use shadow and light to create mood. There’s an admirable overhead shot of Margaret waking up that may be overly symbolic, but still gets points for striking imagery.

Free’s face tells us much without her having to say a lot, Nighy is suitably urbane, Sorace is both sympathetic and alarming, and Maria Caballero is lively as Margaret’s fellow novitiate.

But it’s hard to avoid contemplating the meta aspect of THE FIRST OMEN, because of course, this isn’t the first OMEN. That was actually released in 1976, followed by a couple of sequels. Whether a viewer of THE FIRST OMEN has seen any of those films or not, unless one has somehow avoided pop culture until now altogether, it’s really hard to go in with no knowledge of where this is going.

So, the audience is way ahead of Margaret on certain aspects of the story, and won’t have trouble guessing what seems like is meant to be a twist. We are in actual suspense toward the finale, when there’s so much running time left that we know something more must happen.

THE FIRST OMEN borrows from the original 1976 THE OMEN, with what amount to expansions of some of the biggest set pieces, plus some use of Jerry Goldsmith’s original score. So, it wants to remind us of the connection between the two.

But it’s advisable not to try to square the two movies too closely. For starters, in THE OMEN, the events of THE FIRST OMEN are supposed to have happened in 1966, not 1971. (What the heck is that change all about?) Following the press screening of THE FIRST OMEN, there was an animated, multi-person discussion in the lobby about the jackal. (If you know, you know.) The upshot is that the mythology isn’t going to match up – abandon all hope on that front.

For that matter, there’s some exposition in THE FIRST OMEN that isn’t borne out by the action. By the climax, we’re so busy trying to figure out how (or whether) the explanation fits in with what’s onscreen that the result is more distraction than dread.

One interesting facet of THE FIRST OMEN is that we are told why all this is happening. Our first reaction may be, why would anyone attempt this tactic, and our second reaction may be, oh yeah, there are horrendous individuals in the real world doing their own version of this, so it’s got verisimilitude on its side.

THE FIRST OMEN provides religious horror without endorsing any specific faith, which is a neat trick in itself. For those fond of the subgenre, it’s decent, with some memorable flourishes. For those who want a prequel that dovetails precisely with what we’ve already seen, prepare for some frustration.

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