‘The First Omen’ is Still the Perfect Religious Horror Film
David Gordon Green’s Halloween grossed $259 million against a meager $10 million budget when it was released in October 2018. If anything in Hollywood talks, it’s money, and suddenly, there was a lot of money sitting untouched in horror’s past. Scream came back to critical and commercial success. Texas Chainsaw Massacre topped the Netflix charts (but severed critics). Hellraiser popped by for a hello, and Candyman reintroduced an entire generation to a genre classic. Legacy horror isn’t a new phenomenon, but it is a curious one, especially given the age of the properties Hollywood looks to resurrect. Olwen Fouéré is fantastic, but she’s not Sally Hardesty. The prequel route solves those problems, and The First Omen shows them how it’s done.
In this era of dredging up the past for new audiences, nothing has done so quite as successfully as Arkasha Stevenson’s The First Omen. While its box office haul was slight—$54 million internationally against a $30 million budget—its legacy was anything but. Whether the genre learns anything from The First Omen’s success is yet to be seen, but one thing remains clear: This is how you do a religious horror film, and this is how you do a prequel.
Richard Donner’s The Omen is one of those horror classics that never really sat well with critics. Even in 1976, critics bemoaned its tired scares and hooey religious politics. As archived in Harry Medved with Randy Dreyfuss’ The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and How They Got That Way) from 1978, television personality Gene Shalit called The Omen “a piece of junk”, and critic Judith Crist compared it unfavorably to a comedy. I loved it, including Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar-winning score, though it wasn’t exactly a beloved property to start with.
That antichrist indifference no doubt accounts for why The Omen incited three even worse sequels (though I’m partial to Damien: Omen II), a 2006 remake I’m singularly in love with, and a television sequel series. All of this before The First Omen was even released, and all of it was no small factor in the film’s meager box office results. Not many folk clamoring for more Omen, and even fewer familiar with anything other than the original (if that).
In Stevenson’s favor, this gave her and co-writers Tim Smith and Keith Thomas considerably more flexibility in updating The Omen for a new generation. Referencing the Years of Lead in our interview with the filmmaker, Stevenson remarks how the political turmoil was key to grounding her prequel in a contemporary reality. Contemporaneous critics point to a broad sense of malaise circa 1976, accounting for the public’s willingness to go along with tales of a literal Antichrist and springboard The Omen to groundbreaking financial heights. The sociopolitical juice is still there, though rather than capitalize on modern fears, The First Omen interrogates them.
Critically (and what augments The First Omen as the “perfect religious horror film”), the Roman Catholic Church is principally antagonistic here. There are bouts of religious salvation, namely from Ralph Ineson’s Father Brennan who tries to warn Nell Tiger Free’s Margaret of the radical conspiracy within the church. Here, the broad, systemic structure of the church is to be feared, not necessarily the consequential birth of the Antichrist.
It’s a necessary pivot. In the 1970s, secularism was feared, though the modern day is far more regularly delineated by radical religious extremism. As of 2022, Texas imposes civil and criminal penalties on any doctor who performs an abortion. Florida’s 2022 House Bill 1557, and subsequent revision 1069 in 2023, broadly prohibit classroom discussions of sex, sexuality, gender, and gender identity, while adding sweeping state jurisdiction over banned books and permitted classroom materials.
And if conservatism is nothing but control, The First Omen relishes in the existential terror of a monolithic enterprise on the brink of losing theirs. At risk of ceding all their power and influence, they’re liable to create their own evil (the Antichrist, in this case). Stevenson’s insistence on the script mirroring present-day anxieties is prescient in a political climate that regularly targets women and queer persons as nebulous threats to normal life. Don’t say gay or they’ll get you… or something. I’ve never quite understood what the fear was.
That earnestness and sensational depiction of a reality that doesn’t feel too far off elevates The First Omen above its contemporary franchise horror peers. Beyond the stunning camerawork and Aaron Morton’s cinematography (The First Omen is an Italian horror movie through and through), The First Omen commits itself to challenging rigid conservative structures, masquerading as a religious horror movie while doing so. This isn’t The Exorcist: Believer, another legacy sequel that too easily acquiesced to “faith will save you,” nor is it the ever-popular The Conjuring Cinematic Universe, a series that has consummate nuns and priests on speed dial. The church, horror’s longstanding source of hope, isn’t just antagonistic; it’s calculating and monstrous.
And The First Omen isn’t the first horror movie to posit “Maybe religion bad?,” but it is one of the bravest. Aislinn Clark’s The Devil’s Doorway was similarly bold in its interrogation of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, stretching their sordid history into fantastic, found footage terror, though that was an indie release caught principally on streaming. Heralded by Ava Satani, The First Omen erupted into theaters, subverting nearly 50 years of horror history with it.
The horrors of yesterday are no less relevant today, though if they’re going to be reworked, it’s not enough to just change the story, fill in some lore gaps, and sprinkle in some conspicuous Easter Eggs (a sin, much as it pains me to admit, The First Omen commits in its final reel). The genre needs new voices and new perspectives to recontextualize longstanding fears and plant them firmly in the present. The need to fear the Antichrist hasn’t changed since 1976. The reason why certainly has. Arkesha Stevenson’s The First Omen, one year later, remains one of the few horror movies willing to explore that.
The First Omen is now streaming on Hulu. When you’ve checked it out for the First or fifth time, let me know what you think over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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