Is the origin of the omen itself the omen? The First Omen

Sometimes I think back to Richard Donner. Do you think about what a loss Richard Donner was? And what kind of career did he have? The way in which he managed to touch on various genres, from horror (Omenobviously) to superheroes (Superman), from fantasy (Ladyhawke) to Spielberg’s children’s film (The Goonies), not to mention the action (Lethal Weapon), always at the top. It’s almost scary to see these titles listed and think that they were directed by the same person. In the review of The Exorcist: The Gulliblejust to quote myself in a fit of unprecedented hubris, I wrote:

Horror, we’ve talked about it too many times in these parts, is a very difficult genre, because it requires technical expertise, a sense of suspense and an ability to create and explode tension which is not available to everyone. Basically, either you’re someone who’s worked your way up, learned all the tricks from the masters and knows how to use them surgically, or you’re a damn fucking genius who could direct anything.

Well, Richard Donner was one of those giants who seemed capable of doing everything and doing it very well, without breaking a sweat. Let’s just think about the fact that, when he directed The Omenaka The omen, came from a very long career in television. He had already directed some films, but that was his first horror film and, for a project born quite obviously in the wake of the Satanic Panic and milestones like Rosemary’s Baby And The exorcist, Donner managed to infuse him with an extraordinary personality, forging a small masterpiece of atmosphere, a detective story in which the culprit was a child, apparently innocent but capable of unspeakable acts. An honestly terrifying film, in the best way: not so much in the jumpscares, but in the way he touched deep chords and fears and amplified them on the screen. I always like to quote the scene in which Gregory Peck goes to dig Damien’s mother’s grave and finds the skeleton of a jackal there, a disarmingly simple thing that, nevertheless, manages to give me goosebumps every time.

And why? The story is always the same: show, don’t tell. There is no need to explain anything more than necessary, there is no need to say that the Beast was born from the belly of an animal, it is enough to show the skeleton of a jackal in a human coffin and our brain does the rest. In horror cinema, a lesson that was reiterated to us by the prequels of Alien, often the less you explain the better. Unfortunately, capitalism then starts to ruin everything. Theme song!

The First Omenwhich our friends Titolisti Italiani™ have decided to rename Omen – The origin of the omenin what I rightfully believe to be one of their masterpieces of linguistic maccosism (hey, at least there’s no expression “of evil” in the title!), is the Prometheusor rather theAlien Covenant of the saga of Omen. It is the film whose sole objective is to explain to you the ins and outs of what happened shortly before Donner’s film began. Because Mr. Hollywood saw you, dear lover of horror cinema, while in your bedroom you were racking your brains listening to a song by Mogwai and wondering “Okay, Damien was entrusted to the Thorns after his mother died giving birth to him. But EXACTLY how did things go? What if there was something else behind it?!? Maybe not heaven dikono ??! ”, And he satisfied you: The First Omen answers these questions extensively, exhaustively, pointedly, stopping just a few moments before the start of The Omen.

And it is this desire to explain everything that, by now you will have understood if you have seen a few prequels in your life, almost completely kills the film. Its existence within pre-established coordinates, its nature as pieces of a pre-existing puzzle that must fall into place by the end, would suck the vitality out of anything. Moreover The First Omen falls into the category of prequels that explain everything while trying, at the same time, to invent at least a cool idea that justifies the existence of the film, but which is incongruent with the mythology of the subsequent films and causes logical holes over which hordes of YouTubers will gasp For years. We’ll talk about this idea after the spoiler line; here it is enough to say that it is a beautiful intuition, which made me think that this film, like many new chapters of franchises, was actually born as a stand-alone project, then brought back by Disneyfox under the umbrella of The Omen to once again attempt a relaunch of the saga. This doesn’t seem to be the case, in reality, at least according to the information that can be found online. Yet I wondered, after watching, whether I would judge The First Omen differently, if it had been a stand-alone film.

The answer is “no”. On the one hand, the newcomer (with long TV experience, like Richard Donner) Arkasha Stevenson proves to have a good hand in staging disturbing images – especially a shot, at the end, that I would never have expected to see in a mainstream horror and, apparently, risked the film with an NC-17 rating – and knows how to build a great atmosphere of quiet horror. The result is a film that is different in its own way from the tons of Blumhouse horror films that have invaded theaters in recent years: The First Omen It has the advantage of not looking for an easy jumpscare, but instead placing the viewer in an all-round context, that of Rome in the early 1970s shaken by demonstrations and riots. From The Omen it also retains the nature of detection: here too the characters – including Ralph Ineson in the role of Father Brennan, played by Patrick Troughton in the original film – must investigate to discover the nature of the conspiracy intending to give birth to the Antichrist. The discovery they make is worthy of 70s satanic horror, it must be admitted, even if set in the current conspiracy context.

On the other hand, Arkasha Stevenson’s clear intention is to film a modern horror film, which however has a period flavour, without exaggerating. We are not looking at an Astron 6 film, in which every detail is meticulously reconstructed to mimic the style of a specific era: The First Omen it is undoubtedly a film from 2024, but at the same time it has very well chosen cinematography, sets and faces to seem coherent with the 1976 film of which it is the immediate premise.

Could it have been worse, then? Yes, but she could have done better. In the sense that, unfortunately, The First Omen it’s a remarkable pain in the ass, especially in the central part and in the insistent, entirely corporate way in which it puts the famous pieces of the puzzle back in their place. It also has the big problem of having to include – here too, perhaps at the request of the upper levels – several sequences that recall those of the original, starting from one that you may have seen in the trailer: the disciple of the Antichrist who commits suicide after having uttered the fateful words “This is for you”. For a good half of the film, things happen only to arrive at a fairly obvious and well-known conclusion: Damien will have to be born and will have to be given up for adoption. Stevenson and the screenwriters try hard to sneak in a couple of plot twists, but the biggest one is understood halfway through (or, if you’re a little smarter than me, at the beginning) and the other is quite superfluous/annoying. When you know exactly where a mystery is going, it’s difficult to make the investigation interesting. Unless it’s an episode of Lieutenant Colombo.

Beautiful or good? Nun.

But let’s go a little more specifically and therefore go through…

THE SPOILER RUBICON

The beautiful idea of The First Omen is that, behind the coming of the Antichrist, there is a deviant sect within the Catholic Church. This friendly group of priests and nuns is convinced that the only way to stem the flight of the faithful is to create the perfect villain to convince them to renew their faith in Christ. The idea is cool and, I only thought about it now, it is perfectly in line with the period in which the film is set, that of the strategy of tension and deviant secret services. It’s a shame that it is used in the incipit of a saga in which it will never be brought up again: in the original trilogy, Damien was served by unidentified Satanists. There’s no mention of Satanists here – although, obviously, the implication is that, for a cause, a group of people are transformed into what they hate most without realizing it – and there’s even a scene in which the priest Bill Nighy baptizes little Damien with the sign of the cross. That’s why I say that The First Omen it seems like a film born independently and then forced back into a franchise.

The same goes for the film’s major plot twist: Margaret (played by our favorite non-tiger actress, Nell Tiger Free) is destined to give birth to the Antichrist. She is the chosen one, not Carlita Scianna, who is instead a false lead put there to muddy the waters. There’s a little bit of The Wicker Man in this twist, here too it is a nice, if not very original, find. It’s a shame that it overturns the original concept – that Damien’s mother was a jackal, here it is his father who is one – simply to be able to build the film on a female protagonist. It’s not a big deal, but, again, it makes it seem like it The First Omen a crasher at the party. Which, perhaps, could have given us much more satisfaction if he had decided to organize his own party. With Black Jack and luxury call.

END OF SPOILER LINE.

“I don’t have any tiger, stop asking me!”

It is quite useless to reveal the second twist: suffice it to say that it seems to pave the way for a sequel to the prequel, a… parrallelquel? I don’t know, I just know that I honestly don’t give a shit, although I still hope they title it (W)omen, which would be a great touch. I wish Arkasha Stevenson would let a random Michael Chaves direct it and dedicate himself to something original, because the stuff seems to be there. Hail Satan!

Satanic Panic quote:

“More than a film, a birth.”
George Rohmer, i400Calci.com

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