The First Omen
2024 Directed by Arkasha Stevenson
Horror Marathon 2024 Day 19 Film 37
A young American woman, Margaret, comes to Rome to take her vows as a nun. Her mentor is a Cardinal, and he praises how far she's come from her days in an orphanage. From the time she's there in Rome she's unsettled at how the other nuns treat the children they're caring for. She's especially focused on another girl that she identifies with because of her own days being troubled when she was younger, but Margaret is warned that bad things happen around her. The wicked things that do happen have a bit of a more modern horror film setup in their execution, but thankfully they make sense for an Antichrist story.
As the original Omen already had inspiration from Rosemary's Baby it also can't be helped that there are thematic similarities to that film as well. The early 70s aesthetic is well done, with the clothing and muted stylings feeling authentic for the environment. I liked that Margaret sees a religious system that is distorted with her connection to faith, and she pushes against it because at the very heart of these tales are struggles with faith and organizations. Are people renewed by faith if they have to fear God to engage with it?
Usually the tropes of these films develop their own campiness- the evil becomes silly. Here the scares come without becoming overly absurd- focusing on the human elements that speak to greater concerns about moral decay in society and rampant fear of social collapse. Protests are happening around the city, giving a framework of dread while the coming of the Antichrist lingers in a meta way from people who now anything about the rest of the series. The Catholic rites around becoming a nun are also treated with a sort of scary quality that relates to how rituals can be perceived depending on the viewer. As a standalone film though it still delivers with a more grounded evil that creates suspense around Margaret, even if the epilogue spells out how this prequel links to the other films a bit too much.