The First Omen(3 / 5)
In setting the prequel to The Omen (1976) in Rome, as the debut director Arkasha Stevenson has done, you can better show why an antichrist is ‘ altering into a hotbed of anti-clericalism in government.
An American (who has previously worked in the New York Police Force and is called Margaret Daino, but is referred to by others as Nell Tiger Free) comes to work at an orphanage in Rome, and to take vows of nunhood, even as her piety leads her to question some of the orphanage’s most worrisome practices (keeping some smitten-with-evil students in lockbye) – whose extreme nature is fully exposed by her compassion for one such student. Like Conner, Daino finds herself privy to the diabolical machinations of the Church. And, while it is clear (to us) that she will fail in her quest to stop evil – on its way to The Omen and its sequels – the second half of Arkasha’s The First Omen focuses only on the unavailing attempts of kind people to stay the inevitable.
Possibly its ace in the hole, and that of its debutant director Tim Smith and screenwriters Keith Thomas, is making you root for the murder of Damien, even if you’ve seen the original movie and know what happens. The first half has plenty of that deconstruction of the hypocritical behaviour of priests and nuns but there’s little of The Omen beyond a few throwaway references. This worked for me because finally we understood why they behaved the way they did and they weren’t doing it for no good reason.
This piece of social commentary anchors the film to the world it was made in, but the need for distinction between faith for heavenly rewards versus faith for worldly dominance is both timeless and timely. As the film winds up, it intersects with Richard Donner’s The Omen as Daino passes out at seeing the demon’s hand emerge from a woman giving birth in the orphanage.
Tiger Free acts the house down (especially when voicing self-doubt); Sister Silvia, played by a repentant-looking Sonia Braga who seems saintly and sweet, is almost as menacing at her most simpering, when she acts as though everything is fine and that Daino just might be a bit weird. Ralph Ineson tackles the part of Father Brennan originally played so successfully by Patrick Troughton.
It’s where The First Omen stumbles most, in contrast to the 1976 film, which did it so well. The Omen world was big. A birthday party goes horribly wrong, some animals start acting strange in a zoo, a photographer sees something is off in his photos, the kid throws a fit in the Church, a bunch of deranged dogs are loose in the graveyard — all of this helps to create a slow and steady build of horror that does not feature in The First Omen. Most of the drama takes place in the orphanage.
And the low tally of scares ensures that the forces of light make a nigh-cinch run of their more or less routine business. ‘Where are the masters of the universe who vowed to invade the planet to root out the benighted infidels and leave no one alive?’ we mutter when there isn’t a lot of villainy on the screen.
Then again, thankfully since things start to go downhill with the narration, the chasers do catch up with the chased, yet somehow things are back on track as we appear to be witness to the fleeing of the sheep, that is, the good ones. Damien’s birth staging in the bottom left corner of the scene is rushed, as he is being ‘birthed’ from a surrogate mother (but nevertheless is a huge clincher, and the gore that follows is disturbing) − and next we have the classic ‘Ave Satani’ background music by Jerry Goldsmith with a short dedication to Gregory Peck and Lee Remick.
Thankfully, the film concludes on a hopeful note that suggests more transformations to come. While a few missteps mar it, Stevenson gets the critics’ points wrong in large part while getting others – the casting, notably, and not extending the Superman connection too obviously, or even as far as witnesses might ideally like – right, and generally takes the characters’ powerlessness to the audience with supreme effectiveness.
