A young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church but encounters darkness that causes her to question her faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate.
Richard Donner’s “The Omen” is one of my all-time favorite horror films. When it was released in 1976, with “The Exorcist” (1973) and “Jaws” (1975) preceding it, it catapulted horror movies into the stratosphere, proving that there was more to the genre than cheesy vampires, wolfmen, and zombies. Donner infused his film with supernatural fear and terror that always paid off with a gruesome kill (who can forget David Warner’s untimely beheading?). The apprehension as to who would be bumped off next was unbearable, and that, in and of itself, proved that Donner knew how to manipulate the audience.
Even Don Taylor’s “Damien: Omen II” in 1978 continued the tradition in gruesome big-screen fashion, particularly the scene in which an elevator cable slices a doctor in two. By the time we got to 1981’s “The Final Conflict,” the whole gimmick of death, or the devil, being the antagonist and inconspicuously hunting down anybody who stands in Damien’s way, was beginning to wear thin. And the less we say about “Omen IV: The Awakening,” the better.
This brings us to “The First Omen,” a prequel to the original 1976 classic that finishes just as the original picks up. Nell Tiger Free plays Margaret, a young American woman who moves to an orphanage in Rome so she can begin a life of service to the Catholic Church. Once she settles in, however, she begins to experience strange goings on. After she meets Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson), a priest who has been excommunicated from the church, he warns her of a big conspiracy happening at the orphanage that hopes to bring about the birth of the Antichrist. At first, she refuses to believe him, but after discovering compelling information that confirms Brennan’s conspiracy, she quickly realizes that she is to be a part of it, whether she wants to or not.
This had the makings of a good story, but prequels have a reputation for being very hit-and-miss, and sadly, that is the case here. We know that whatever transpires herein will lead right up to the beginning of “The Omen,” a film considered a true classic horror, so you would think that writers Tim Smith, Keith Thomas, and co-writer and director Arkasha Stevenson would try to deliver something absorbing and entertaining, a movie that could possibly sit next to “The Omen” in the pantheon of great horror films but it fails at almost every level.
One element of the original trilogy was the filmmakers’ ability to tell you something terrible would happen. When David Warner’s character picks up the seven consecrated daggers that could kill the Antichrist after Gregory Peck’s Thorn throws them away, refusing to kill his son, believing him to be innocent, Warner is then decapitated by a sheet of glass that flies off a runaway truck. In “Damien “Omen II,” a doctor is split in half by a falling elevator cable, while another character is impaled and crushed between two train carriages, every one of them having just realized that Damien was the Antichrist.
At the beginning of “The First Omen,” when Father Brennan meets Father Harris (Charles Dance), a priest who tells him about the Antichrist conspiracy, the church they meet in is being renovated. We are shown the scaffolding and tools used by the builders, leading us to believe something terrible will happen, and sometime later, something does. Still, it is never truly explained how the accident half impales one of the characters, leaving you scratching your head after the anticlimactic buildup. A later death is stolen directly from the first film, but its execution is uninspired, lacking the visceral and shocking impact of the original.
The movie also had the opportunity to capitalize on Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar-winning score, but it is only used briefly in one scene and never heard again. I will give kudos to director Arkasha Stevenson and cinematographer Aaron Morton for perfectly capturing the essence of early 1970s Rome, along with the student protests and social movements that impacted the city at the same time. They also sparingly utilize the slow zooms prevalent in countless 1970s movies, giving “The First Omen” a distinctly ’70s vibe. The acting, for the most part, is fine, with Nell Tiger Free going from an innocent and naïve young woman to a fighter and protector who will give her own life to save an innocent, proportionate to Gregory Peck’s gradual transformation in “The Omen,” initially his refusal to believe that his son is the Antichrist, to reluctantly accepting his fate and willing to die to save all of mankind.
In “The Omen,” when Robert and Keith open Damien’s mother’s grave, they discover a jackal carcass and, in the next plot, a child’s skeleton with a shattered skull, proving, once and for all, that Robert’s son was indeed killed and then replaced by Damien. But the big revelation was that Damien’s mother was a jackal that Satan implanted his child in. In “The First Omen,” they completely eliminate this aspect, ignoring it entirely by replacing his mother with a human. Why? I have no idea; this choice was never explained.
Ultimately, “The First Omen” is a generic horror film that tries to ride the coattails of its more famous predecessors, failing to invoke even the slightest bit of fear or dread. The film’s overall look is impressive, but unfortunately, that is all it has going for it.
In Theaters Friday, April 5th
