Didn’t we just do this? How many An American in Peril Italian nunnery stories are we gonna have this year, huh? I’ve had two in two weeks now. Is this all the rage in Hollywood? Now that everybody has made a deal with the Devil, the Devil wants some payback in script form? And this is the 2nd film in a row in which a nun didn’t know she was pregnant. Again … did you guys cheat off the same paper? Cuz this particular topic might not come up on film more than once a century, and here it is twice in two weeks.
The Omen first came out in 1976. In line with The Exorcist, these films demonstrated what delightful horror could be had messing with Christians. The films were groundbreaking in a few ways, not the least of which is The Omen essentially served as the original Final Destination film. The film foreshadowed gruesome fatalities well in advance and then let ill-fated set of Rube Goldberg events play out to our horror. The First Omen immediately got in on this, not quite diagramming a colorful death ahead of time, but certainly displaying the same feeling of Goldbergian fatalism when a pipe breaks through a stained-glass window and strikes a priest on the head three stories down.
Whoa! Hey, is this gonna be some good horror? Cuz that was quite an opener.
Alas, that death is the best in the film … unless you’re really into combo hanging/self-immolation.
All this is set up for rookie nun Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free, which sounds like a command) entering into an Italian convent. She comes in with a lot of hype; this nun’s AAA numbers are off the charts. Her rookie card sells for $$$. But Italy is the big leagues of Catholicism; heck, we saw what it did to that nun from Immaculate. Pre-Sister Mags better have all her prayer beads in order, knowwhatI’msayin’?
This convent is a tad different than the one in Immaculate. In Immaculate, the nuns were cloistered, sequestered, hidden, trapped, locked, abused, whatever word you best need to describe a group who finds the black hole of the nun world. In The First Omen, Li’l-Sister Margaret is assigned to an orphanage where, as far as I can tell, the nuns have nothing but free time. (Isn’t that just so like nuns?) You just had to be there for the moment where the new Under-Sister and her -for lack of a better word- “roommate” dress trashy and go clubbing.
Seriously. The nuns have a night out as nightclub girls. The film takes place in 1971. Maybe this was a fallout from Vatican II that never reached my ears.
This is all silly business; the plot here revolves around orphans who may or may not be Satan spawn. The convent has identified an older child, Carlita (Nicole Sorace), as a possibility, so Mini-Sister Margaret naturally takes a liking to her. And mystery follows. Sort of.
Honestly? The biggest mystery here is what Bill Nighy is doing in this film.
So here’s a question for Pro-Lifers – suppose you’re carrying Satan’s baby. Is abortion still a sin?
From the hot nuns to the clawed hand emerging from what should have been a birth, The First Omen is a confusing set of mismatched scenes and visuals. Am I rooting for the pre-Siste
r or not? Is this an evil convent? Why do the clergy here WANT to bring forth an anti-Christ … and how does this fit in with The Omen fiction?
For a film devoted to The Omen canon, The First Omen loses the central point immediately. Damien, The Omen child, was born of a jackal. That was a pretty big part of The Omen, if memory serves. Today’s anti-Christ is simply an in-bred freak, being that -if I’m understanding this correctly- Satan is both father and grandfather to the anti-Christ. That seems a fairly poor understanding of genetics, IMHO. You can’t really control which genes you pass down; Satan would do better to reproduce a-sexually. Or, I dunno, maybe that’s one of Satan’s powers, to control genes. Hey, buddy, you do you.
The First Omen is neither great mystery nor great horror. I cannot deny, however, it has elements of both, as well as some scary visuals and colorful deaths. I sat through, however, the entire thing wishing I were watching The Omen or even Damien: Omen II instead. I guess Damien had to work his little way up to bigger shows.
There once was a pre-nun called Mags
All set to live life in black rags
But Satan found the nunnery
And had their little funnery
Now it’s too late for our heroine to pack bags
Rated R, 120 Minutes
Director: Arkasha Stevenson
Writer: Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson, Keith Thomas
Genre: Confusing prequels
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People desperately waiting for the nonsensical prequel to a 1976 horror film?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Everybody else
