The 1976 film The Omen, which chronicles the coming of the Antichrist, has long been considered a classic of modern cinema. It, along with 1973’s The Exorcist, established a distinct subgenre of religious horror films that brought the question of faith and its ambiguity to the fore. The Exorcist most recently made its comeback thanks to 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer. And now modern cinema has reached The Omen. “Omen. The First Sign, as the title suggests, is a prequel to the original movie. We’ll tell you in our review how it turned out.
Pros:
interesting topics about the role of women in religion and the fear of childbearing in modern culture; Overall a strong script with no overtly stupid moments; some really disturbing scenes
Minuses:
the film fails to adequately immerse itself in any of the components of its atmosphere; This is not a scary horror film at all; As a franchise, the local story doesn’t provide any additional depth or worthy new elements.
“Omen. The First Sign / The First Omen
Genre horror
directed by Arkasha Stevenson
Starring: Bill Nighy, Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Charles Dance, Sonia Braga, Nicole Sorace
Premiere cinemas
Release year 2024
IMDb website
A young American woman, Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), arrives in Rome to dedicate her life to serving the church. But before her initiation, there is still time that she can spend getting to know the city and the traditions of the local religion. At the shelter she meets a girl, Carlita (Nicole Sorace), who is considered mentally ill. But a large-scale conspiracy of the church may be connected with it, aimed at bringing the Antichrist to the world.
The original “Omen” was attractive due to the combination of its two strong qualities. The first is quite obvious and related to religious themes. The film revealed the horror of the Antichrist not directly, but through hints and unfortunate coincidences. That is, the story carefully adhered to an important element of horror: horrors do not need to be explained again, just let them happen. And the second quality is the strong, almost viscous atmosphere of the 70s cinema, multiplied by European scenery.
In the case of “Omen. The first sign,” we can immediately say that not a trace remains of the second. The film seems to be trying to show the beauty of Rome, but does it without style or accents. In addition, most of the film takes place in the standard settings of a monastery and its orphanage. So the aesthetic part in the film became less.
Last year’s “Vatican Exorcist” did a better job with the visual part of religious motifs. “Omen. The First Sign” is generally filmed modestly, almost tastelessly. This despite the fact that it will still give you some unusual and vibrant scenes. But they only highlight how lackluster everything else about the movie is.
Perhaps the fact is that for director Arkasha Stevenson the film became a debut in a feature-length format. Before that, she worked on short films and TV series, and for the latter she was remembered for her participation in “Legion” and “Channel Zero”. These are great shows with strong horror elements and overall competent mayhem. But here we have a typical situation when a novice director, who has shown himself excellently in compact stories, cannot cope with a full-length film.
The movie spends its first half treading water, throwing weird-but-not-weird-enough-to-be-good scenes at the audience. And in the second half, the story tries too hard to stick to the original Omen. At the same time, all the classic tropes of modern Hollywood scripts are present here. Unexpected revelations, successful clues, a competent combination of circumstances – everything is in place, just like some kind of template.
However, what the film really succeeded in was revealing the role of women in the context of religion and childbirth. It is shown here through existential, almost primitive horror. This tone makes The Omen Begins feel like a more personal and elevated story than 1976’s The Omen. In addition, it looks appropriate in the current social environment.
But talking about such ideas seems more like an attempt to justify such a movie. And yes, this is another horror film that is not scary at all. However, there are still some creepy and disgusting scenes here, but they don’t go into the territory of pure fear. The movie does not work as a psychological thriller, precisely because of the lack of a “psychological” component.
This is not to say that the story of the film seems far-fetched, as is often the case with many prequels and “returns to origins.” But we cannot find any special reasons for its existence.
The Omen as a franchise as a whole builds on the strengths of the first film, which were gradually eroded by unsuccessful sequels and re-imaginings. “The Omen: Origins” when viewed from this angle does not seem like an outright failure. But it doesn’t bring anything valuable or truly new to the franchise. The script revolves around familiar elements, images and even entire scenes. They look good, but are somewhat sterile and accurate even without some of the charm of the original source.
Conclusion:
Hollywood loves to make completely useless horror films, and The Omen. The First Sign” is a clear representative of this trend. This is definitely not the worst or stupidest movie in history, but after watching it you don’t understand at all what it was. And most importantly – why.
