Margaret, a Catholic novice, arrives in Rome in order to become a Bride of Christ. The eternal city is verging on Chaos, riots by Students and Workers have made the streets dangerous and the Church is losing its hold on the populace, particularly the young. Margaret soon discovers something sinister is happening with a conspiracy within the Catholic church, and particular within the Orphanage she is assigned to work at. They want to bring to life an age old foe, and thus fingers cross raise the church’s profile amongst the disenfranchised. Naturally, Margaret isn’t so keen on the anti-Christ being brought to life, and with the aid of two Priests fights back against the powers that be. But are there even more secrets to unfold, and does the conspiracy reach to the upper echelons of the church hierarchy?

Guess the movie title, The First Omen, would indicate that this movie is a prequel to the franchise movies we have already enjoyed. The action takes place in 1971 Rome, which Omen devotees will immediately point out, is just prior to events in the first movie The Omen (1976). So I guess the question the movie has to answer is how do we get from events in Rome to rural England and the U.S ambassador couple. For mine, we got there in sort of an okay fashion, if for the moment we avoid talking about the whole mythos thing. Look at you bringing up jackals when The First Omen doesn’t contain them or even reference them. But okay am giving the movie a pass on this aspect, even though as normal modern Hollywood really doesn’t get franchise mythos and continuity of storytelling. Hey modern audiences clearly have low attention span. You know that would be the mythical audience that never seems to turn up to whatever is being spewed out of LaLa land currently.

Like the original couple of movies in the franchise First Omen is going for a serious adult orientated horror movie rather than the wham bam approach of teen orientated outings. So we get a slow moving plot, which seeks to inform us while building tension and atmosphere, which I guess is pretty much what a conspiracy orientated movie should do if it wants to work. Unfortunately, while the atmosphere is working, this is a dark fable and what we see on screen certainly backs that up, the tension really isn’t happening as the director may have expected. Stevenson keeps letting the viewer off the hook, as scenes that should be tightening the screws are interspersed with other scenes that while developing the plot fail to deliver on horror tactics. As horror directors prior to Arkasha Stevenson have discovered, peppering your movie with major scenes loosely tied together with involved storytelling don’t get horror fans to where they need to be.

Speaking of major scenes, the movie takes time out of its busy schedule to reproduce a number of scenes from the first movie, which is a risky tactic considering you may very well be pointing out your movie isn’t as good as a classic that your audience definitely know about. In the opening scene set in a church yard we get the classic pole falling from on high to take out a Priest giving a warning, the Devil isn’t a big fan of dobbers apparently. I would imagine if you haven’t seen the first movie in the franchise this scene would be nonsensical. Even worse is the scene where the Nun decides to hang herself from a balcony in full view of the orphans, we even get the smash through a window. While this scene was in keeping with the flow of The Omen, “Look at me, Damien! It's all for you.”, it sort of came out of nowhere in First Omen. Lesson here is don’t reference scenes from movies where the makers actually knew what they were doing. I also had the feeling that the movie was moving between major scenes rather than being a consistent storyline that builds on itself.

Where this movie really comes apart at the seams is with the special effects. The movie is really at its strongest when it implies things, like that sex scene that is all sound and smoke and mirrors. However, we do get weird scenes like the one with the devil’s hand in the crowd. The scene reminded me of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness (1987), which had a similar effect in one scene. So special effects have apparently not improved over the last 30 odd years, or this was a bring your grandparents to work experience day or something. To be honest the movie would have been a hell of a lot better if it was sans special effects and simply focused on the tension and the visuals going down.

Okay ready to explore the conspiracy which forms the basis of the movie? Good, lets rock on then, be warned the logic of it is about as viable as a MAGA supporters belief system, i.e. it doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. So elements of the Catholic church, always a good target for the tinfoil brigade, having determined that younger people are no longer asking for their advice have decided to bring about the anti-Christ, you know the harbinger of the end times according to Christian mythology. So in order to save the church they are planning to destroy it? The concept here is about as logically as a Conservative environmental policy. While the original few movies built their anti-Christ credentials on Satanists, some of whom had infiltrated the Catholic church, this latest outing is saying the Church is quite capable of bollocking things up on its own thank you very much. Guess we are not meant to talk about the underlying fallacy here, just shut up and watch right?

End of day, besides the rather braindead premise, I was okay with the plot and the developments used to get us to the final scene. The movie happens just prior to the original The Omen (1976), involves the birth of the anti-Christ and quite possibly another link to a later movie which isn’t overly explored, thank god! We get a rising atmosphere, sorry the tension just isn’t allowed to build, and a rather dark feeling throughout. While I wasn’t overly sold on things, I didn’t get taken out of the movie at any stage either.

Acting is solid to excellent with standout performances by Nell Tiger Free (Margaret) and the ever reliable Bill Nighy (Cardinal Lawrence). While there are clearly going to be no Oscars dished out to this movie, I was believing what I was seeing from the acting stand point, with all cast members selling the movie solidly.

I would like to say director Arkasha Stevenson nailed it, but there really wasn’t a lot here to nail to the barn door. Scenes were lifted whole from previous movies and everything else was pretty standard shoot and move to the next scene. Which of course is to say that Stevenson didn’t put a foot wrong in delivering on a moody adult orientated flick, but to be honest we could have been back watching the original, nothing new here.

Another week another prequel to a horror franchise; are we getting a tad too many of those over the last couple of years? Well at least it wasn’t that most dreaded of horror tactics, the remake with lesser movie makers being involved. While The First Omen does nothing new it doesn’t overly fail either. Not entirely sure we needed this prequel, which does breach the mythos established in earlier movies, but then again it does continue the franchise. Moderate recommendation on this movie, you are not going to die wondering if you don’t watch it, but nice to see some adult orientated horror is still being produced. I guess the only omen we are getting from this movie is Hollywood isn’t going to leave any stone unturned when it comes to pillaging past franchises.