The First Omen (Overhyped Supernatural Horror Fail)
Like it or not, mainstream devil movies are back in a big way. Starting with last October’s Exorcist reboot, movies like Immaculate, Longlegs, The Exorcism, Late Night With the Devil, The Pope’s Exorcist, The Deliverance, and more have made it the best multiplex era for The Dark One since the late-1990s millennial panic. Call it a symptom of a national conservative turn and the resurgent political power of religious evangelism, or call it a countercultural response to those trends. Either way, it was inevitable that studios would start to resurrect any devil franchise with name recognition, and 2024 saw the release of two legacy prequels to classic demonic children movies – one of which does almost everything wrong, while the other does almost everything right. We’ll start with the wrong: The First Omen.
Set in the early 1970s, The First Omen follows an American novitiate nun named Margaret who arrives in Rome to take her vows and work at a church-run orphanage, quickly becoming embroiled in a dark plot to bring the child of Satan into earthly form. Aside from seemingly forgetting every ten minutes or so that it’s supposed to be a period piece, the film pays lip service to modern concerns like women’s rights and unwanted pregnancies, but buries these themes under an excess of hollow style and an overblown ending that reaches for an emotional catharsis it doesn’t earn, no matter how many flames they shoot at the screen. Fear not, because all is not bleak in 2024’s devil nursery. In my next review, I’ll hip you to another film, superficially similar to The First Omen, that asks the same questions with real craft and social resonance.
Written by Cthulen, Dead Dreamer
The First Omen (2024, US)
Arkasha Stevenson
3.2 / 5
