The First Omen Explores the Demons That Haunt Womanhood

The First Omen is a surprising film. Not because it packs in jump scares (there are almost none) or because it shocks with gore (there’s very little blood), but because it’s a remarkable exploration of a woman’s traumas and fears dressed up as supernatural horror. Touted as a prequel to the 1976 franchise-spawning sleeper hit (or its pointless, lifeless 2006 remake), The First Omen follows the journey of novice Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), who has arrived in Rome to spend time at an orphanage in preparation for her sisterly vows.

It’s always tricky to play around with existing material and it’s been something of a trend for studios to mine every IP that has had even the most moderate of successes (which explains the baffling existence of films like The Fall Guy) in the hopes of recapturing some box office magic, but director Arkasha Stevenson seems to be focused on the singular task of worldbuilding. Stevenson’s unerring focus on fleshing out the origins of the franchise’s main character, Damien Thorn aka the Antichrist, sometimes comes to the detriment of genuine scares but the film is all the better for it.

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Stevenson foregoes cheap scares and instead devotes her efforts into crafting truly beautiful and terrifying imagery suffused with exquisite sound design. The tumultuous backdrop of 1970s Italy, beset with student protests and burgeoning social upheaval, gives the film its color both literally and narratively. Subdued Kodachrome hues establish the era while the decline of the Church’s popularity as a result of the times sets the stage for the Antichrist’s return. Unsavory members of the Catholic Church, by some twisted logic, aim to use the menace of the Antichrist to drive an increasingly faithless populace back into the controlling arms of organized religion. 

The iconography and trappings of Catholicism make it easy to deliver sinister undertones. Stevenson doesn’t have to try too hard to evoke a sense of dread in an orphanage run by nuns. But more than the requisite terror of a demonic messiah, The First Omen mines every woman’s deepest fears and weaves them imperceptibly, almost subversively, into the story.

From gaslighting to date rape to childbirth, The First Omen takes the very real fears of women and gives them an occult spin. Margaret reveals to her roommate and new friend, fellow novice Luz (Maria Caballero), that she used to be plagued by voices and visions but was convinced by the priest, Father Lawrence (Bill Nighy), that these were mere figments of her imagination. When Margaret goes against her superiors’ wishes to help Carlita (Nicole Sorace), a similarly haunted orphan, she’s told that she’s unwell and forcibly locked away. Gaslighting is a tool employed in the most insidious relationships, a means to control and take away agency.

It should also be unsurprising that the Antichrist is a product of rape. The violation is wrapped in an infernal veneer of ceremony but rape by any other name is still rape. It’s even more terrifying than monster horror because it’s unpleasant and uncomfortable in all the worst ways. The devil’s consort doesn’t scream or fight back but in stolen moments of clarity simply whimpers helplessly in protest.  Stevenson removes all sensuality from sex, and even when she shows female skin, it’s terrifying, not titillating. Showing the sharp-taloned inhuman caress of the devil feels somewhat tacky but helps drive home the point that the experience is ugly and unwelcome. It isn’t a gruesome death or freak accident, but it’s just as sickening because it’s on-screen rape that’s easy to overlook as it’s done so quietly with very little struggle. The film also makes a show of the woman entering into the unholy covenant at the beginning but regrets her decision midway. It’s rape.

This is the genius of The First Omen, which fails to match the original in terms of horror but in many ways surpasses it by presenting fates worse than death. Stevenson’s mastery of the cinematic language lends The First Omen its unsettling beauty. There are very few jump scares despite an abundance of opportunities to employ them. Instead, Stevenson uses the simplicity of darkness to build tension, languidly cutting from Margaret, who is straining to see tenebrous forms in the dark at the same time as the audience, to completely black frames, where something begins to take shape. It’s breathtaking visual horror that demonstrates tremendous directorial restraint.

When the time comes to birth Damien—a foregone conclusion in this prequel—Stevenson tries her best to balance the beauty and preciousness of pregnancy and childbirth with the mind-numbing horror of having no agency as the demonic cult takes full control of the entire procedure. She punctuates the narrative with periodic reminders of the intrinsic misogyny of a patriarchal church, such as when Luz makes her vows and relinquishes her agency to an unseen higher power. Although the film paints the church as infected with corruption, it doesn’t even feel like blasphemy because lecherous clergymen exist, and the Church’s complicity has been exposed on numerous occasions. A devil-summoning sub-sect within the halls of the Vatican? Yeah, why not?

The First Omen also plays with the theme of women as disposable objects, useful only for childbirth and servitude. The fact that Damien is male has simply been taken for granted throughout the franchise but this story by Ben Jacoby adds a twist at the end that brings it to our attention. Patriarchal cultures give more importance to the birth of a male child and treats females as an afterthought. It turns out that the devil is the same. After all, Jesus was a man, too. But The First Omen sets the stage for a series of sequels that can conveniently discard all other films beyond the first one in 1984. There’s a feminist undertone that never gets in the way of the narrative and almost doesn’t rise to the surface until the very last scenes. Unlike the first—and subsequent—films, almost all of which end with the Antichrist triumphant, The First Omen leaves room for hope.

Beautifully shot and eerily scored, with a story that provides the franchise with more building blocks than any of its predecessors, The First Omen is the best Omen film since the original. It’s a wonderful cinematic experience best seen in a quiet theater with excellent surround sound. For female horror fans, this just might be one of the scariest films of the year.