If Satan is supposed to be the great deceiver, you’d think he would clever enough to never have to reuse the same gags. And yet, the opening scene of 2024’s The First Omen recalls the moment in the 1976 film for which this is a prequel, as a priest played by Charles Dance is killed by shards of a stained-glass window in a manner very similar to how David Warner was killed by a runaway sheet of glass.
Then there’s the suicide of Ishtar Currie-Wilson. That can’t be a spoiler, because something is obviously wrong with her from her first appearance on the screen, as character channelling less Catholic nun and more Sister of the Bene Gesserit from Dune. Her death is almost exactly like that of Holly Palance’s nanny in the original film, except she has to go one step further by also committing self-immolation. Damn overarchievers, setting themselves on fire as they jump off a balcony with a noose around their neck, swinging backwards through a large window. This scene and the original are even preceded by the same line: “It’s all for you”.
Maybe the movie has to resort to mimicking the original because it can’t come up with many effective scares on its own. The first such moment that comes to my mind is when a novitiate played by Nell Tiger Free watches a birth going horribly wrong—make that impossibly wrong, as what is emerging from the mother’s vagina is the large, gnarled hand of somebody or something of very advanced age. While the idea may be repulsive, the nature of this was so absurd as to make me laugh out loud.
Free’s character is at the center of the film and she is in almost every scene. She is believable in conveying wide-eyed wonder as an American arriving in Italy. Is case you’re wondering why they brought a nun-in-training to teach at an orphanage in Rome, you’re not alone.
Her roommate, and fellow novitiate, Maria Caballero also finds this curious, but only for about a minute. Then she’s dragging Free to go clubbing and hook up with guys. Her argument is that she needs to know what she’s giving up in her decision to become a nun. That seems like spurious logic to me, but I can’t imagine what makes somebody want to become a priest, a monk or a nun.
Free takes a particular interest in Nicole Sorace, a deeply troubled girl who is frequently punished by being put in the “bad room”. Our heroine experienced what sounds like schizophrenic episodes when she was a girl and so can relate.
The stern head nun played by Sonia Braga is insistent the girl is inherently evil. This seems to be confirmed by Ralph Ineson’s excommunicated priest, who believes Sorace is part of a plan to birth the antichrist, so that the world will again need the Church. According to Ineson, there are really two churches, the one Free knows and another that is devoted to evil. In saying this, I thought he was just another Catholic who hates Protestants, but he actually meant both divisions are within the Catholic church.
I’m not a fan of the original trilogy (I refuse to acknowledge the fourth entry which was made for television), but it isn’t like I actively dislike them. The first has some clever ideas at least, but even that one succumbs to some indulgences which make it a rather trashy affair. At first, this latest film seemed to be more interesting and high-minded than the rest of the series, only to become even more daft than the worst of the lot. I can’t possibly take seriously a moment where Free fails to realize she is holding on the torso of somebody who has been bisected by a vehicle.
That scene and at least one other were so predictable that I not only knew exactly what was going to happen, but also the exact instant they would occur. Film editors establish a rhythm for a film and I was actually able to count the beats leading up to the jump scare. I’m not claiming I have any special ability, but I do want to call out how predictable editing is in most films today.
And, overall, I found The First Omen to be a very predictable movie. There is a twist I saw coming roughly an hour before it happened, as it is the only possibility which makes any real sense, given what we know is coming in the original Omen. That any prequel cannot chart a different course than the work it precedes is a hurdle any such film has to overcome. That The First Omen has so few surprises in telling us how it arrives at that destination negates the purpose of this picture entirely.
Dir: Arkasha Stevenson
Starring Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Sonia Braga
Watched on Fandango At Home (nee VUDU)