Co-writer/director Arkasha Stevenson-who cut her teeth as an episodic TV mercenary-shows some pretty strong command of the feature medium in her film debut as she uses the tale of a young American nun (Nell Tiger Free) who is tasked by a disgraced priest (Ralph Ineson) to help unravel a sinister conspiracy in the Italian church she just joined to set up the birth of the antichrist which drives the events of the 1976 film from Richard Donner. Whatever parallels exist between The First Omen and last month's Immaculate are merely an unfortunate coincidence as this takes a far more serious, atmospheric approach to its subject matter than Michael Mohan's campy thrill ride did.
This creepy slow burn approach proves to be a wise one as Stevenson provides plenty of space for a sense of gradually escalating unease to build via its use of powerfully grotesque imagery that's beautifully lensed by rising star cinematographer Aaron Morton (No One Will Save You, this weekend's Abigail) and an engaging story that touches not only on themes of a woman's bodily autonomy, but the fear-mongering tactics religious institutions use to garner support among the public during times of societal crisis. All of this leads to a disturbing finale where Free really shines by unleashing all of the fury her character's been holding in for most of the movie with the kind of vicious blunt force that we don't see on screen often enough and the full picture of evil that's been bubbling underneath the surface the entire time finally reveals its hideous face in all of its insidious glory.
Ironically, The First Omen really only stumbles in its final moments when it has to deliver the explicit connective tissue between its story and The Omen. For a film that is deadly serious, creepy and pretty grounded by supernatural horror standards, the sudden pivot to ridiculous, contrived narrative tie-ins at the very end is baffling to witness. All of the careful craftsmanship and sinister beauty that Stevenson built up disappears from the frame as the obligatory franchise tie-ins are tossed out there with a similar level of soulless as we saw in the aforementioned disaster The Exorcist: Believer.
As rock solid as The First Omen is on the whole, its franchise ties prove to be a burden that ultimately makes it worse overall and is yet another damning strike against the whole practice of making horror films that tie directly into beloved films from the past. Requels, reboots and prequels are a phenomenon that will never leave the horror genre, but the filmmakers and studios could make them considerably better if they stopped shoehorning in connections and references to the past films that don't need to be there. Stevenson shows a lot of skill as a filmmaker here and I don't think it's a coincidence that the only time she dropped the ball was when it came time to connect her film with Donner's. Take that mandate from Disney/20th Century off the table and we could be looking at a great horror film instead of one that stops just short of greatness due to a needlessly forced dud of an ending that only exists to serve the IP gods.
Grade: B
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