[‘THE FIRST OMEN’ Review] A blasphemous, sacrilegious & unholy prequel that should be worshipped

Courtney Howard // Film Critic

THE FIRST OMEN

Rated R, 2 hours

Directed by: Arkasha Stevenson

Starring: Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Sonia Braga, Maria Caballero, Nicole Sorace, Bill Nighy, Andrea Arcangeli, Ishtar Currie-Wilson

Back in 1976, THE OMEN birthed one of horror’s most consistently compelling franchises. What the series does best is mix multiple cinematic subgenres in with the bloody brutality. Part domestic drama, part pulse-pounding chiller, it showed a family thrown into crisis a few years after bringing home a baby boy from an Italian hospital. Its solid sequel, DAMIEN: THE OMEN II, is centered on a coming-of-age crisis for its titular protagonist as he struggles with accepting his devil-inherited powers. THE FINAL CONFLICT plays like a political conspiracy thriller showing an adult Damien stopping at nothing to rule the world. Despite a 4^th made-for-TV movie (THE OMEN IV: THE AWAKENING), which was essentially a gender-swapped remake of the original, and a contemporary reboot in 2006, the original Damien Thorn trilogy captured sinister fear in its purest form.

With its prequel THE FIRST OMEN, filmmaker Arkasha Stevenson has crafted an assured directorial debut. It’s a God-damned thrill ride through a hallucinatory hellscape that creeps under the skin and dovetails nicely into director Richard Donner’s film. She and her collaborators know precisely how to turn up the tension, delivering a frightening feature that’s in the same spirit as its predecessors, but also one that blazes its own trail.

When we first meet Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), she’s just arrived in 1970s Rome as a nervous, naive novitiate looking to take the veil. The country is in chaos with riots and protesters in the streets and the Catholic church seeing a decline in attendance. Margaret is to spend her days serving at an all-girls orphanage under the watchful eye of harsh disciplinarian Sister Silva (Sonia Braga). And Margaret’s nights are spent in a spooky apartment with gorgeous temptress/ roommate Luz (Maria Caballero), who encourages Margaret to bend the rules and indulge in a few cardinal sins before pledging her heavenly honor.

Margaret’s quick to learn that there’s a troubled teen occupying the orphanage, Carlita (Nicole Sorace), who reminds her a lot of herself at that age, ostracized, alienated and plagued by premonitions. She makes it her mission to help the outcast. However, she starts noticing strange behavior exhibited by those who surround Carlita, first by those clouding her origins in eerily whispered secrecy and secondly by peculiar-acting Sister Anjelica (Ishtar Currie-Wilson), who pledges her devotion to the young girl before self-immolating and hanging herself. As other suspicious shenanigans mount and Margaret’s personal demons manifest in delirious visions, it becomes clear this sacrosanct place might actually be the devil’s playground.

Prequels can be a tricky beast, but Stevenson and co-writers Tim Smith and Keith Thomas (working from a story by Ben Jacoby) instinctually know how to slot their entry into the extensive mythology. Not only does it justify its existence as a film independently of the series, it also knows which nostalgic pressure points to push, from its aesthetics to its prickly, staccato score. The filmmakers pull grounded inspiration from films like KLUTE, REPULSION and POSSESSION. They push the envelope on the grotesque to further fiercely feminist sentiments, particularly when it comes to female bodily autonomy. Given this prologue deals with childbirth, those traumatic sequences will have audiences squirming in their seats as they provide both shock value and character-building moments for its heroine.

While there’s a lot of terrific, terrifying imagery on display (including homages to previous OMEN films), some of the most frightening aspects aren’t necessarily what’s explicitly shown or discussed, but rather what lurks in the narrative’s dark recesses. The picture houses stinging commentary on the politics of spirituality, anarchic rebellion and the Catholic church’s corrupt machinations. The spider motif threaded throughout speaks to the tangled web woven. The smash cut to black from Paulo’s (Andrea Arcangeli) dancefloor seduction, followed by Margaret awakening in her bed the following morning, confused and looking like a disco-punk Medusa, leaves the audience on edge over what happened – revealed later in a gasp-inducing, brilliantly cut montage by editors Amy E. Duddleston and Bob Murawski. Plus, the filmmakers harness the power of the original trilogy’s bleak, pitch-black tone.

If there are to be nitpicks had, they surround the film’s mystery question: “Who is this cloistered young girl and will she birth the Antichrist?” The original hung on the suspense created by the question of whether or not Damien was the son of Satan. The sequel was focused on if he’d fight or follow his evil instincts, and the third film was about whether he’d triumph in his war against God. Yet in this prequel, we’re ahead of the characters’ conundrum far before they’re made aware of the answers. There’s no disguising who will birth the Antichrist, given a scene that arrives too early in the first act, but the filmmakers seem intent on delivering a bait-and-switch reveal that comes as a surprise to no one except those in the movie.

That said, despite areas where it comes up short, it more than makes up for it with spirited scares and clever kills. With a star-making, revelatory performance from Free, assisted by strong supporting turns from Ralph Ineson and Bill Nighy, this is an exceptional example of a prequel that works.

Grade: 4 out of 5

THE FIRST OMEN will be released in theaters on April 5.