The First Omen (2024)

Review: written Apr 2024

Satisfyingly ominous nun-stop tension

A prequel is a tricky thing, especially when the nearly fifty year old original is so well known. You know where events have to end up, so the requirement is to make the ‘how’ it gets there compelling. As such, I approached this prequel with no small degree of trepidation… and yet, Arkasha Stevenson has directed not only a worthy prequel, but a movie that creates genuine dread and even sneaks in some timely comments on female body autonomy too.

The setting is 70’s Rome, with the young novitiate Margaret (A terrific Nell Tiger Free) arriving amid a background of anti government and anti church protests. She enters the nun run orphanage, and from the start, unsurprisingly, a sense of unease develops. There’s a plot afoot to bring people back to the church by showing them what the antichrist would mean for Society, and Margaret is about to get more involved in it than she could ever have imagined, as she seeks to find out why the young orphan Carlita is being kept in “The Bad Room”. Add to this, the oddness of her fellow novitiate who surprisingly encourages her to sample Rome nightlife before “taking the veil”. After a couple of conventional “jump scares” to warm up the audience, the dread builds often through what isn’t seen, and also through some genuinely disturbing scenes – it’s definitely not to be watched if you’re pregnant, and won’t do anything for recruitment to convents.

The cinematography is lush and perfect for the period setting and as a link to what has gone before, and the story itself includes more than a few nods to the original for the fans, including a skewered priest, a hung nun and some alarming frescoes, as well as Father Brennan himself making an appearance (played by David Warner in the original). Bill Nighy and Charles Dance have minor roles, but it’s really Nell Tiger Free who in-habits her role and ably convinces in everything the script throws at her. But what I really liked about this movie was that it didn’t lodge itself into a franchise mythology and feel bound to do a retread – this is (reasonably) faithful to the original storyline and would likely form a great double bill, but by showing events from a woman’s perspective, has a quite different viewpoint and tone. The horror is often implied, and it’s frequently the tension between a woman’s helplessness and a woman’s agency to control her fate that create the drama. Indeed, I would argue this owes more to “Rosemary’s Baby” or even “Black Narcissus” than to its namesake, and all the better for having that variety of influences. Be in no doubt though, some of the imagery will remain etched in your mind for a while.

So if the challenge in a prequel is in the ‘how’, this movie has succeeded. What’s more, it brings its own creepy flavour to the table and mostly avoids nun-horror cliché. I can definitely offer a surprised thumbs up, and wait with interest to see what Arkasha does next. There are more than a few “Horror Nun” movies out lately, but if you only see one – you could do a lot worse than this.