The First Impression
My Initial Thoughts About 'The First Omen'
Brennan: What do you think that Church is most frightened of?
Margaret: The Devil?
Brennan: Secularism!
"The First Omen" is beautifully photographed. Arkasha Stevenson directs with bold and acute intent. Nell Tiger Free gives us a fearless performance. And Mark Korven's musical score is intense and inventive — it's one of the best things about the film — and that's saying a lot as Jerry Goldsmith fan.
But its plot is a convoluted mess. The more they tried to explain just how the Antichrist is born, the more goofy it sounded. I thought nothing could one-up "Omen IV: The Awakening"'s "fetus papyraceous" reveal, but here comes "The First Omen" saying, "Hold my beer!"
Look, there's a really interesting movie here, with its own lore and mythos. It could have stood on its own. But we'll never know. Because they've shoehorned it into "The Omen" like Cinderella's step-sisters trying to jam their feet into the glass slipper — it just doesn't fit — the very premise of each film is at odds with each other.
"The First Omen" is about a Church splinter group who are so upset that people have left the Church, that they conspire to birth the Antichrist himself so that his presence in the world will scare the faithless back to the Church.
Um, sure?
Now here's the premise of "The Omen": a Biblical prophecy foretold for thousands of years is fulfilled with the birth of the Antichrist who will rise up to dominate the world and bring about Armageddon (FYI, that's the End of the World).
"The First Omen" completely rewrites the whole purpose of Damien's birth. No wonder the filmmakers kept the original writer of "The Omen," David Seltzer, out of the loop during its eight years of development and then stonewalled him as it approached release.
I think "The First Omen" has some interesting observations about the Church and some timely, important things to say about female bodily autonomy. But in order to say them they must change the very premise of the source material (not to mention rewrite the Father Brennan character to fit their new narrative).
Well, I'm sorry, but waltzing in 50 years later only to hollow out the guts of "The Omen" so that your movie can fit all nice and tidy into its empty husk is just lazy and cheap and profoundly disrespectful of the original.
Remove all connections to "The Omen" and you have a really good supernatural thriller.
2.5/5
