The First Omen

Available on Disney+

Given that it shares a premise with, and was released around the same time of, the mediocre Immaculate, it’s easy to approach Arkasha Stevenson’s prequel to The Omen with caution. However, despite the ‘scary nun’ subgenre of horror being more than a little well worn, The First Omen proves to be a far more efficient affair than one would expect it to be.

The film, set in the Rome of the early 1970s, follows Nell Tiger Free’s novitiate and her gradual unearthing of a perverse Catholic conspiracy to birth the Antichrist. While the reasons for said plot eventually prove to be more than a little nonsensical, it provides a solid enough basis from which Stevenson can conjure a frequently frightening feature debut. To that end, proceedings are helped in no small part by Free’s committed lead performance and Mark Korven’s eerie score.   

Nonetheless, The First Omen is somewhat inhibited by its franchise status, which no doubt contributes to a final act that is almost laughably nonsensical and completely out of keeping with the events which precede it. While the majority of the film is an intriguing body horror that works effectively as a commentary on church and state’s attempts to curb women’s rights, its crescendo is the sort of OTT fare that we’ve come to expect from mainstream horror.

Thankfully, this isn’t to the detriment of The First Omen as a whole, which at the very least distinguishes Free as a compelling lead and Stevenson as an artful filmmaker worth keeping an eye out for.