The First Omen

• Directed by Arkasha Stevenson
• April 25, 2024
• Based on characters created by David Seltzer

An American woman sent to work at a church in Rome discovers a conspiracy to bring about the birth of the Antichrist in order to bring humanity back under the control of the Church.

From the start there’s plenty of weirdness but not very much that is frightening in The First Omen. I don’t need to be even scared out of my mind when watching horror, but I’ll take disturbed or just plain uneasy if it a serious presentation like this. Maybe even some needless gore or the dark comedy of the 80s. But you don’t get even THAT.

It might be more accurate if this film had been call The Other Omen rather than The First Omen. It tells “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey was famous for saying. We get an addendum/retcon of the events leading up to the original Omen that expands upon/changes much of what one could draw from or was actually displayed in the first film in a horror movie with a very noticeable message.

That message? One of religious manipulation and religious control. This film is built around the conspiracy theory that the Catholic Church has controlled most things for centuries and with that control slipping away in the mid-20^th century is looking for a way to get it back. It is all about the idea of the Catholic Church seeking to maintain some kind of absolute power over its masses outside of mass. That seems to change what they did with the original Omen film. Originally it was minions of Satan seeking to bring about the Antichrist and by default destroy/overthrow God.

Reframing the birth of an antichrist (we get another/parallel one to Damian here) as a plot by some in the Church to create a threat which they could control in order to drive people back to them does not make sense to some versed in religion. Makes sense then to bring about one aspect of the End of Days. Did nobody here read the Bible?

As I recall Damien was born of a jackal. Gregory Peck and his friend even opened a grave and found the jackal. I am also pretty sure in Damien-Omen II Meshach Taylor confirmed there were dog cells or something along those lines when he examined a sample of Damien’s tissue. Point being no puppers of any type are involved here in the birth. Did these people watch any of the Omen films?

Here not only Damien but his twin sister are born of an American nun who has been having visions all her life. What kind of visions? Not sure since she just needed to have an overt sign that she was to be part of something else. Beyond being a novitiate, she is little else as a character. But back to her babies.

The unknown sibling has been a staple of television and to a lesser extent film series for quite some time. Rarely does it work. And if you’re doing a prequel with a previously unspoken of sibling the chances of it actually working are significantly less than those of the Sybok reveal in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

I guess they were attempting to start a new Omen series with the antichrist being a girl…maybe. Damien and this new sibling are to have sex and produce an Antichrist from there…maybe? The way they talk it could be either. Message over story produces such things. Though here rather than Damien being all gung-ho on the whole thing, new sibling looks like she must choose. Or that is what they were aiming for by the closing scene.

The acting is okay and there are good moments but no scary moments. And worse as an add on story it feels like fan faction than a major studio release. We get a story that takes its time to get to not much. If there were more here I would have no problem with a slow walk but there is not. It is two hours of something that could have been covered in half the time or less.

With plenty of weird but not much else The First Omen is only ‘okay.’ It’s much less of a prequel and more of an attempt at a new series. I just couldn’t get into it with its message over story.