- Starring
- Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson
- Director
- Arkasha Stevenson
- Rating
- R
- Genre
- Horror
- Release date
- April 5, 2024
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
The Omen franchise is centered around the ominous tale of Damien Thorn, a child born of Satan and entrusted to Robert and Katherine Thorn. As the saga unfolds, it is revealed that Damien is destined to be the Antichrist. The sequels delve deeper into Damien’s life, his dark heritage, and the chilling events surrounding the Thorn family. Â The franchise includes several supernatural horror films, such as the original âThe Omenâ (1976 – directed by Richard Donner) and its sequels, as well as a TV series and its newest addition, 2024’s prequel, The First Omen.
The First Omen
Since childhood, Margaret has been a ward of the Church. When the American Cardinal with whom she grew up has her transferred to Italy to be confirmed as a nun, she feels blessed. However, it doesn’t take Margaret long to begin to realize that something is very wrong with the faithful surrounding her.
The First Omen is a wonderfully shot piece of horror cinema. It lovingly channels the cinematography and pacing of its 1976 progenitor and mostly eschews today’s trend of thousands of fast cuts in every scene. These long continuous shots held on performers masterfully dripping with silent subtext allow for the slow-building tension that fans of the genre used to enjoy before horror became a race to see who could get the most graphic and disgusting gore past the MPAA.
Aided by a perfectly haunting score and equally spine-tingling performances, The First Omen has all of the talent on both sides of the camera needed to cement itself as a worthy heir of the franchise, one that could usher in an entirely new era of horror that thrills rather than repulses. Unfortunately, it somewhat fumbles this with a handful of counter-intuitive gross-out moments that arrest the tension that had been building. Even more disappointing is The First Omen’s underwhelming conclusion. Prioritizing the franchise’s continuation over solid storytelling or continuity, it wraps things up with a quick and easy cheesy bow that might as well read “To Be Continued.”
However, where the movie truly fails is in its needless and blasphemous retconning of Damien’s origin (i.e. the entire film). It unnecessarily dumbs down the Church’s leaders in order to propagate a narrative full of Kola Superdeep Borehole-sized logical (let alone doctrinal) inconsistencies… because.
WOKE ELEMENTS
The Old Girl Network
- The First Omen is a heavily female-centric film, with the handful of men in it being relegated to tertiary supporting roles. However, this does not a woke movie make. While almost certainly, the behind-the-scenes discussions leading up to its creation were peppered with progressive clichés like, “It’s about time,” the film is crafted in such a way that the female-laden cast makes complete sense. Furthermore, the male characters aren’t sacrificed at the altar of beta cucks to make the lady folk look better.
Thirty Pieces of Silver
- The movie’s greatest sin, earning most of its BASED score of 0%, is only its entire premise. There is no way to explain it without spoilers, so be forewarned.
- ***SPOILERS*** The film has retconned Damien’s origin so that he is no longer born from a jackal and protected by Satanists. Now, a misguided cult (that “goes all the way to the top”) within the Catholic Church brings about the AntiChrist. They so fear the “freedom” and “loss of power” born from the growing secular movement that they believe the only way to once again “gain the trust” of those whom they’ve lost is to breed young women with demons and the resulting female offspring with their own demon father. They contend that the fear, death, and depravity fomented by the AntiChrist’s reign will be such that it will drive people back to the Church. ***END SPOILER***
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
14 comments
Sweet Deals
April 12, 2024 at 6:47 pm
Those who are attracted to power are those most afraid of losing it. Those who serve G-d submit themselves to a higher power. Those who make movies about religious organizations who subvert the will of G-d to cement their own power have little to no understanding of G-d at all. Of course, “the church” and G-d are not necessarily synonymous.
But at least the cinematography was decent.
Derek Tombrello
April 12, 2024 at 11:06 pm
Sounds like what they did in “the Nun II.” Only in that one, the entire female-led cast lets you know that men are second class citizens, women are all powerful and racism… because reason. 🤷♂️
You mention the modern trend of fast cuts. Something else that irks the hell out of me is the absolute inability to light a scene anymore. Every movie I see is filmed in near darkness, with only the equivalent of 4 watt night light bulbs lighting the scenes. I mean you can have a n office building, or a hospital even and every room is dark – even with “lights” on. Lamps or light fixtures – I’ve even seen flood lights – that don’t give off as much light as a candle! But more often, you will see these rooms lit by only what little ambient light is allowed to stream in through a window. It’s like they are being directed by film school dropouts.
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 13, 2024 at 3:24 pm
At this point, you could have a movie about woke characters who meet a demon, get told that the demons are really good and it’s the Church that’s evil, and plenty of woke characters would happily believe it and go for whatever the demon wants them to do. Then, when it’s finally revealed that the demon was lying the whole time, it won’t be much of a surprise for anyone with half a brain, but it’d at least be internally consistent throughout the movie.
Richard
April 17, 2024 at 9:13 pm
I thought it was dreadful for the most part. It looks like they gave an art-house director a big budget and told them to direct a horror movie, but only base it loosely on the movie that follows on from it… The pacing was slow, the deaths were banal and pretty much copies of deaths from the Omen series (an homage perhaps?) . Sure the acting is top notch, and the direction is very good with some nice touches, but it fails to match the original in tension, musical score, build-up, pacing or conclusion. Nice to see an actor who has been in Doctor Who once more grace an Omen movie (in this case Bill Nighy, in the original we had Patrick Troughton and Ronald Leigh-Hunt).
***SPOILERS*** The movie does indeed retcon Damien’s origin so that he is no longer born from a jackal and protected by Satanists. They do try to get round it by having the Demon that impregnates Margaret appear to be a Jackal that gets burned alive at the end, which sets up a whole other lot of questions. First of all, why is the Devil working with the Catholic Church? Especially if the Churches only reason for bringing the Antichrist into existence is to scare people back to the church. The only way this works is by having Damien at some point or other actually REVEAL himself as the Antichrist, but as we know from the movies, the Devil and Damien himself go to great lengths to bump off anyone who even remotely suspects who he is. Why would the Devil go along with the plan anyway? How did they manage to summon the Devil in the first place, and how did they get demons to impregnate women to create these vessels? it make no sense. I hardly think the Devil would allow his son to be born, used as a pawn and then be destroyed, just so the Catholic Church can gain MORE power! Then we have the fact that Damien’s mother is the spawn of a demon/the Devil, herself, and not a Jackal. The Jackal may or may not have been the form the demon takes when impregnating Margaret, but then it isn’t a REAL Jackal is it? So how come Damien’s blood is the blood of a Jackal, as seen in Omen II. In the novel of the film and the movie itself, Brennan goes on an ultimately futile redemption arc to make up for what he has done. In the book he was present at the birth and was the one who murdered Robert Thorn’s child and buried it, along with the Jackal. Since the book was written by the screenwriter, I think this can be pretty much accepted as canon. Brennan in this movie is quite a heroic figure, not tragic at all, and we don’t get any impression he had much of a role in the birth of the Antichrist. Finally, in a massive nod to the Omen, a nun self-immolates while at the same time jumps off a roof with a rope round her neck, mimicking the death of the Nanny (played by Jack Palance’s daughter in the Omen), she even says the line ‘It’s all for you’ while looking at Margaret (while she is standing next to the disturbed child, so you are not sure who she is saying it to at this point). However, in the Omen there was a real build-up and reason for this action. The hell-hound possesses the nanny to get her to commit suicide in order for her to be replaced by the satanic cult member Mrs Baylock (the wonderful Billie Whitelaw). In this movie it is just done for shock value, with no rhyme, reason or motive. There is also another scene where a man is cut in half by a truck, but there is no wonderful build up like in the death’s of Brennan and Jennings from the Omen, it is a jump-scare death of a meaningless character, which has no emotional impact or sense of impending doom. ***END SPOILER***
All in all, I found this movie a huge disappointment. I could have got on board with some of the changes if indeed they were making out that this was a reboot going in a different direction, but they showed a picture of Gregory Peck near the end, so tey obviously intend to have this as a direct lead in to the Omen itself.
Far too many plot-holes for me. It made far more sense to be a satanic cult, trying for the third time to bring about the End of Days by getting Satan to impregnate a Jackal so that his spawn could end up causing Armageddon, but instead we get the Church somehow convincing Satan that it needs more power, so spawn the Antichrist to control him and use him to get people back into the bosom of the church.
Like the very expensive car in the showroom
I ain’t buying it!
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 18, 2024 at 7:45 am
The woke hate Christianity, especially Catholics. It’s that simple. They can’t tell creative stories because creativity requires intelligence, so they come up with really stupid stuff like having Satan working with the church. Anyone with half a brain can see what a dumb idea it is, but the woke don’t have even half a brain.
If you ever question which religion is correct, ask yourself which one or group is reviled by awful people.
Ktuff_morning
April 18, 2024 at 8:58 pm
I didn’t see all of it I got an emergency call to get back into surgery. No review here yet I’m afraid. I will say that your merch is all complete crap. You need to apologize for the Joe Biden Tshirt. It’s well-known he has a lifelong stutter he tries to hide. You use it to make him look like he has dementia. You are a liar. A brazen bald-faced liar. You owe US President Biden an apology and remove the tshirt. I will take a WioW mug however, free of charge.
James Carrick
April 18, 2024 at 10:35 pm
You have something negative to say? How unexpected.
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 18, 2024 at 10:38 pm
Part of the reason that marketing to the woke doesn’t work: they honestly expect to get things free of charge and feel no shame over it. Remember, they’re raised to expect that Marxism works and that they should receive everything for free.
Richard
April 19, 2024 at 5:19 am
The further left you go, the more entitled they become and the more they feel the rules don’t apply to them.
Derek Tombrello
April 18, 2024 at 11:14 pm
I, too, have had a stuttering problem my whole life. All fifty years of it. So has one of my friends, who is worse than I am. Biden’s problem has nothing to do with stuttering. It has to do with his being a complete moron who DOES HAVE the added handicap of being a dementia patient who cannot even receive proper care because it would destroy the puppet god regime.
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 18, 2024 at 11:33 pm
How sad is it that the woke don’t even know what stuttering is and so easily figure that that must be what’s wrong with him?
Richard
April 19, 2024 at 5:17 am
Biden does have dementia. A stutter does not stop you from knowing where you are, or how to get off a stage, or how to ride a bike, or remembering someones name etc
In the past he’s always seemed a lot more lucid, the stutter is only brought up when he does or says something idiotic, which is pretty much all the time!
Dan
June 22, 2024 at 5:20 am
While I agree that no one should make fun of anyone, no matter what their religious or political view, I hardly see Biden as suffering from stuttering when you saw him give speeches and talks rather well during Obama’s first and second terms and before all that. To say that Biden is just merely suffering from a “lifelong stutter issue” is REALLY glossing over the facts here.
The man doesn’t know where he is half the time. He reaches out his hand to shake empty air. He disrespects leaders of other countries as they try to shake his hand and he just gets up and walks away, leaving those leaders furious. He trips on air and stumbles on dust. He rambles on and on and then dismisses his forgetfulness and the media applauds him for being the best thing since sliced bread. He causes division within the country. He blatantly lies about Trump. He covers up his son’s sins. He pays off a leader in another country with taxpayers money while printing more and causing a worldwide inflation that is only getting worse. He allows more than 10 million illegal aliens into the country and says the border is secure. Not to mention the people coming into the border are not all Mexicans, they are healthy, young men (where are the women and children in those hordes of “illegals” hmmm?) with seemingly no health issues or anything, let alone evidence of their fleeing “oppressive” countries.
The man has lost it. Long time democrats like Bill Maher and Dwayne Johnson can see it and they are even attacking the man on his policies, agendas, his causing division, his gaffs and everything else. He is by far the worst “selected” president in the history of the United States. I would rather take another term of Obama than another term of Biden. Oh wait, we are already in Obama’s third term…
kevin kevinsonsson
May 30, 2024 at 9:35 am
They werent able to get away with turning Damian into a girl so they went with the next best thing , they made it so Damian has a twin sister.