My eyes glazed and rolled up into my head back whenever it was that I had learned that, nearly two decades after the poorly-received The Omen remake starring Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber, 20th Century Studios via the Walt Disney Corporation was churning out a prequel film for the mixed-bag yet lucrative horror franchise. The First Omen purported to chart the origins of the child Damien, the son of Lucifer who originally fell into the well-meaning laps of American diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) and his wife Kathy (Lee Remick); parents who, in Richard Donner’s 1976 film, are surreptitiously told that they lost their own baby during childbirth. During the months leading up to its premiere, when trailers for The First Omen preceded new releases I went to see in theaters, I dismissed them and looked at my phone the entire time that they played. Unless it’s something like the Evil Dead franchise, I generally don’t give horror sequels or prequels a passing thought other than “obvious insta-garbage.” How wrong I was about The First Omen, the feature debut of writer/director Arkasha Stevenson.
After watching The First Omen, I was unsurprised to learn that Stevenson had helmed the entire superb third season of the underappreciated horror anthology series Channel Zero, which aired under the title “Butcher’s Block” back in 2018 on SYFY. Channel Zero remains an unparalleled work of modern horror filmmaking and storytelling—especially now, when American horror films are at the worst they’ve ever been. To learn that the director of The First Omen not only had her hands in the series but directed its second-best season did not come as a shock. Her film immediately struck me not as a franchise cash-in, but as the work of someone who deeply understands what makes good horror tick and who made this installment almost completely their own. The small handful of Marvel-esque Easter eggs are entirely negligible for how well the film succeeds at being an affecting and stomach-churning work of modern horror.
The First Omen kicks off with a queasy conversation between two English priests, Father Harris (Charles Dance) and Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson), over the conception of an unknown cursed child, a girl (Damien is a boy, yes—but I’ll keep this review spoiler-free) whose birth will bring forth an all-powerful evil. Kept elusive and told via a collage of disturbing yet striking images, we leave this scene and cut to the arrival of a young American nun-to-be named Margaret (Nell Tiger Free). Margaret is nervous and chaste, while bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and she touches down in 1971 Rome amid the backdrop of civil rights protests. Nevertheless, she is welcomed by the elder nuns of her new home, Vizzardeli Orphanage, where she will soon take her vows and commit the rest of her life to serving God. She befriends her new roommate, the free-spirited Luz (Maria Caballero), who is determined to use her remaining days of secular freedom spent as the hedonistic young woman she still is. One night, Luz gets a reluctant Margaret all gussied up and drags her to a disco, where Margaret meets a nice Italian boy with whom she shares an intimate moment. The next day, she wakes up in a puddle of her own sweat, the memory of the previous night already erased; Luz assures her that she got Margaret home safely.
The disco night remains Margaret’s only moment of weakness, and she returns steadfastly to her work at Vizzardeli. There, she takes a particular interest in outcast teen Carlita (Nicole Sorace), who becomes very obviously (too obviously, some might say) the most ideal candidate for Lucifer’s child. An off-putting girl with Samara-from-The-Ring stringy black hair, she’d been placed in a separate room for assaulting another child and biting a nun. But Margaret feels only empathy for Carlita, as the two share a similar upbringing: Unruly, misbehaved children who grew up in orphanages and experienced strange, dark delusions. Margaret explains to Carlita how, with help from the nuns and priest at her own orphanage, she came to understand that the visions were all in her mind and thus offers comfort and hope for her new friend. But a grave encounter with Father Brennan portends impending doom surrounding Carlita, and Margaret begins to see and experience strange, diabolical things: Like the self-immolating suicide of a young nun (Ishtar Currie Wilson) who jumps from a ledge and proclaims, familiarly, “It’s all for you!” as Carlita, Margaret, the nuns, and the children look on in horror.
That callback, a fairly humorous zoom and namedrop at the very end of the film, and a physical photograph of the late Gregory Peck, are about as far into reference territory as The First Omen ever delves. But it’s window-dressing for a film which otherwise stands apart from the usual American horror fare, specifically impressive to see in a prequel to five succeeding films (all with diminishing returns). From the opening sequence, in which Stevenson opts for minimalist storytelling through images over exposition, bookended by a gruesome punchline, it becomes clear that this won’t be just any franchise legacy installment. Stevenson, aided by co-writers Tim Smith and Keith Thomas, makes The First Omen remarkably fresh while utilizing old tricks. Pans and zooms give the filmmaking a throwback feel (cinematography credited to Aaron Morton), jump scares function as earned accoutrement for a well-crafted atmosphere instead of supplanting actual horror filmmaking, and there are images that are genuinely difficult to look at—not just because they make the audience look at something particularly visceral, but because of the way the shot is blocked, the way the lighting is lit, the way a body is not quite as it should be. Not overtly gory but just off, which is often far more skin-crawling than blood and guts ever are.
None of this should come as a shock for the girls who get it—there’s a direct line to The First Omen from “Butcher’s Block,” which followed the six-episode arc of two troubled sisters who move to a small town that is watched over by a family of immortal, sky-dwelling cannibals. A silly premise on the surface, the eerie tale unfolds methodically amidst Stevenson’s image-focused direction: There is something so impenetrably haunting about a pitch-black wilderness lit only by the ominous glow of a marble staircase ascending unknowably to a door some feet just above the ground. The door at the top of the staircase peeks open, and mortal bodies below are irresistibly drawn to the horrible secrets kept just behind it. In this image from “Butcher’s Block” alone, there is a clear, innate grasp of what is most important in crafting a horror film. The fear of what’s just kept out of sight is the most affecting of all, and in The First Omen, the seen and the unseen are balanced to impeccable effect. The film also, admittedly, gets a bit of homage oomph from Rosemary’s Baby in the final stretch, with a handful of scenes, shots and even an exchange between characters, that are practically lifted from Polanski. But a film about the conception of the Antichrist undoubtedly owes itself to the 1969 horror. The plight of Margaret is far more heightened than that of poor Rosemary Woodhouse, but Margaret gets her revenge as if justice for that which eluded Rosemary.
The First Omen is certainly not perfect—despite the splendid focus on showing and not telling, there are at least a couple trope-y scenes of “wise character expounds upon horrifying background information to another character” and “mama, let’s research.” But perhaps most thankfully, The First Omen is almost entirely bereft of an over-imposing “actually about trauma” throughline, opting instead to use the period setting as fodder for plans of the impending Antichrist, and to use the relationship between Carlita and Margaret as a surprisingly sharp, pro-choice narrative about the co-opting of women’s bodies by the church. Maybe I’m just so enthusiastic because, as a former horror zealot, I’ve been let down so many times that I have all but given up on the recent genre output from the American film industry. But The First Omen is an exceedingly successful first feature, and an invigorating film within a genre’s increasingly limp mainstream.
Director: Arkasha Stevenson
Writer: Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson, Keith Thomas
Starring: Nell Tiger Free, Tawfeek Barhom, Sônia Braga, Ralph Ineson, Bill Nighy
Release Date: April 5, 2024
Brianna Zigler is an entertainment writer based in middle-of-nowhere Massachusetts. Her work has appeared at Little White Lies, Film School Rejects, Thrillist, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more, and she writes a bi-monthly newsletter called That’s Weird. You can follow her on Twitter, where she likes to engage in stimulating discussions on films like Movie 43, Clifford, and Watchmen.