When I first heard of the title of this new take on a 50-year-old horror franchise, I thought, well, we already had our first Omen and that was in 1976. Did the filmmakers have amnesia between the 1976 shocker and its needless 2006 remake? Well, duh, because this is the prequel to the events of the 1976 film, not a sequel. There you go. Today, we have sequels with the same titles as the originals, sans Roman Numerals so you'll forgive me if the word "First" threw me off. "The First Omen" is not a disaster and there are inklings here of something more than the standard fire and brimstone Hades tales of many sequels and rip-offs since the original "Omen." Still, I was largely underwhelmed when it was over.
A Massachusetts-born woman, Margaret (Neil Tiger Free), is a novitiate who has just been employed at an Italian orphanage working with the nuns and young girls. Her knowledge of Italian is spotty at best as she is made fun of by the girls yet she gravitates towards one very sullen girl, Carlita (Nicole Sorace), who scribbles on the wooden floors of her room and, when summoned due to bad behavior, is placed in the "Bad Room." Margaret lives in an apartment with a roommate who takes her clubbing. Once there, she meets Paolo and it doesn't take long before he's out of the picture mid-way through this overlong movie.
"The First Omen" has some startling, wild images including when Margaret wakes up in bed with strands of her long hair forming what looks like a giant spider (see the picture above). A Caesarean is performed in one scene that is enough to make strong stomachs ache (it almost garnered an NC-17 rating). There is also a vision of a demonic nun that may remind you of "The Nun," of course. Most of the movie has flashes reminiscent of "Rosemary's Baby" than "The Omen" or its various inferior sequels. In fact, except for one timidly gory death at the beginning and an immolation harkening back to a suicide by hanging in the original, this "First Omen" doesn't have much of the flavor or Gothic look of the original films. What might have worked as the story of a woman's need to become a nun, facing obstacles like sex and dancing at clubs in addition to facing unimaginable horrors, becomes a late-night horror film that resembles early 90's made-for-VHS/DVD horror. I don't know if that was the intended aesthetic but it did not leave me nostalgic for that type of low-rent, smoky, sepia-toned horror fare.
Neil Tiger Free easily gives the film some of its soul and she is the best thing in it (aside from an unrecognizable and chilling Sonia Braga as the abbess of the orphanage). Most of the movie though is easy to anticipate including those very cliched false alarm scares minus (thankfully) the shrieking alarm sounds, and the big secret that you can pretty much guess from the beginning. As a demonic horror movie, it does a serviceable if unwanted job of leading up to the opening scenes of the first "Omen." Give the real First Omen another look.
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