'The First Omen' Review: An Unenthusiastic "Boo"
The first thing that comes to mind when the horror genre is mentioned is (rightfully) the scare factor. Is it scary? It better be; that’s why you’re buying your ticket in the first place. The best horror movies of all time absolutely terrified people in all sorts of different ways. Halloween had people double checking their locks and closets, while Nightmare on Elm Street had folks think twice before closing their eyes at night. These pillars of the genre are driven by the desire to scare, and they’re so memorable, in part, because they do it so well. A great example more recently is The Conjuring, which can be credited to some extent for a resurrection of spiritual horror on the cinematic plane, as well as a renewed interest in audiences to approach it. That film ended up spawning the genre’s biggest cinematic universe as it exists today; say all you want about the subsequent releases and spinoffs, but that 2013 behemoth of a scary movie is undeniable.
‘The First Omen’ is a well made film on a technical level. Few efforts, especially in the genre, look as good as this one does. It’s lit naturally and shot on location, allowing sharp, inflamed colors to wash over frames and silhouette figures. Oranges and somber blues dominate the visual foreground, while baleful grays lie suggestively in the background, hinting at something dark hiding in the cloudy skies and arm-to-arm with nuns in the abbey. But it fundamentally fails that oh-so-crucial part of being exactly the sort of movie it’s been played up to be: it just isn’t scary, at least not in any way that it should be.
You may be prompted to look away, but only because of the visceral gore that stands-in for what could’ve been scary sequences that capitalize on the suffocating atmosphere that is captured in the visual work. Body horror isn’t always unsuitable, but in this circumstance, the matter sticks out in a disarming, over-the-top way. Outside of this aspect, the R-rating is hardly earned elsewhere, which heavily cheapens the experience.
Every now and again, there will be a good bit of build-up towards a conflict, where tension is tangible and the stakes grow rapidly… and then, unfailingly, the film resorts to the same gross-out method; again, and again, and again. After a while, you start to wonder what sort of movie you’re watching after all. This issue is at the forefront of The First Omen, though it’s far from the only one.
This narrative not only struggles to necessitate the physical manipulation that eventually maligns it, but really falls short of anything beyond its premise by the time the credits roll. The concept is a fairly compelling one; we tail the tale of a young nun named Margaret as she is called across the country to begin her journey as a committed member of an Italian church. Expectedly, things are not as they seem, and her bid to a life serving God is quickly shelved for something unavoidable and deeply sinister. This is technically a prequel, too, meant to tell the story that precedes the infamous 1976 horror flick The Omen.
Here, Nell Tiger Free, in spite of the writing, brings Margaret to life. Her performance is a lifeline throughout this entire thing, something you can latch onto as the film unravels itself further and further as it trudges on. She has a future in this genre if she wants it, and for some, the movie may be worth a watch for her alone.
But she’s suffocating (sometimes literally) in a story that has no idea what exactly to do with her. Most of the value is found in the way the film’s cardinal events are lined up; any guise of intrigue is drawn out in this way, and it means that a few short sequences fight for the film’s waning immersion in different peaks along the way. Revelations are purposely clouded and revealed down the road to dramatize the impact and, even if it’s done only to make what is a plain story more interesting, it still works.
The actual heart of what’s being told here is so stretched thin though, so painfully noncommittal, and when we cut to black for the final time, it’s all you can think about. The story makes an attempt to interpret biblical history in a way that modernizes it, but in still connecting itself to the church and church systems of old, it falls short of any promise the spiritual ideas could present. There is an alarming detachment in the relationship between the visuals and the narrative as they relate to the religious subject matter, wherein said subject matter is completely dumped onto the former, thereby drowning it and leaving the latter hanging out to dry. It’s double trouble, and in a long line of incredible faith-based horror, The First Omen stands out for all the wrong reasons.
It almost becomes distracting how much religious imagery is utilized in comparison to how bare bones its usage in the narrative is. We get the occasional reference to some theological premise and the occasional whispered prayer, but the film truly stumbles beyond the surface-level inclusions, and doesn’t come close to necessitating the setting in the first place. The opening sequence is strong and may have you believe you’re about to embark on something more, but the ending is the inverse, and has the opposite effect. The final minutes do serve a bit of decent character work for Margaret, and Free’s performance peaks magnificently here too, but the closing revelation cheapens all that came before it to an irrecoverable point. The final act is one of harshly unsatisfying conclusions that serve as a final reminder that this is a misfire, indeed.
Unless you’re just a diehard horror fan hungry for a new release, this one is going to be hard to recommend. For being nearly two hours long, there’s very little to latch onto or remember it by. The First Omen is a traditional prequel in the way that it unfortunately fails to justify its own existence, falling into the busy chasm of efforts long lost, doomed to the same fate.