"The First Omen"

   ☆☆ 

There is only one way for a prequel to end, and The First Omen manages to end at almost exactly the moment that 1976's original The Omen (which now can no longer be called "the first Omen," I guess): A baby is born and given to the U.S. ambassador to Rome—which in the world in which the Omen franchise, as it's come to be called, takes place is apparently a heartbeat away from the presidency.

I won't ask you to name the last ambassador to any country (or city) has been in such a powerful position, but apparently the people who helped bring that antichrist to life believe that this will be the best place for the child to grow into Sam Neill and try to take over the world.

Who were those people? What was their plan? And how did they wrangle the devil into impregnating someone and then kill that woman in order to plant the child with Ambassador Thorn and ensure he would be named Damien?

Assuming you have been wondering about those questions for the last 48 years, then, good news! The First Omen wants to answer those burning questions that have been keeping you up at night after watching movies like The Omen II, Omen III: The Final Conflict, Omen IV: The Awakening and, of course, the 2006 remake of The Omen, in which Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber were the unwitting parents of the devil in the 21st century. But this movie pretends that movie didn't happen, and The First Omen instead goes all the way back to 1971, five years before the first Omen.

All of this matters, because ... well, it doesn't. Nor, in the end, does The First Omen. This is not a movie likely to ignite a new round of Satanic Panic that will end with hundreds of hysterical accusations that ruined the lives of children and adults alike. The first Omen was a pretty ridiculous movie, but between it and The Exorcist managed to influence an entire nation. Pity the adult who was named Damien in the years before its release.

Nonetheless, The First Omen begins in 1971 in Rome when Margaret, a plucky young American woman (played by British actress Nell Tiger Free), journeys to an orphanage that is as dimly lit, shadowy and crumbling as you can hope a Roman orphanage to be. There are sinister goings on. Of course there are. The nuns are creepy. Of course they are. The nuns explain why these religious horror movies never involve Protestants, I guess. One of the nuns is Sônia Braga, oddly enough.

Margaret begins to suspect that there's something fishy happening in those musty hallways. Then, a gravelly voiced, excommunicated priest (Ralph Ineson) who made an appearance in the grotesque prologue, shows up and tells Margaret to meet him late at night in another shadowy room, and tells her of an ambitious, complicated plan to bring about the birth of the antichrist, which of course we know is going to happen because we've seen cherub-faced Damien drive all those zoo animals crazy.

So, The First Omen turns into more of a conspiracy thriller than a horror film, until its final act, in which all sorts of grotesque things happen and there's a sudden plot switch-up that you will not see coming unless, like me, you saw it coming.

There's one scene in which Free shows herself to be an actress of remarkable ability. The scene can't be described without giving away that long-ago-telegraphed plot twist, but suffice it to say: This may be a bad movie, but she does something extraordinary on camera in one long take that for a moment lifts the film above the ordinary.

Then it sinks back down. And down. And down into a ludicrous finale and an even more ludicrous final scene that tries to both connect the film to The Omen from 1976 and set things up for an unrelated sequel. Let's hope it doesn't come. But if it must, let's hope Free is available for it. She at least makes things interesting.

Viewed April 13, 2024 — AMC Burbank 16

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