Better than ‘Nun’: ‘Omen’ a watchable, sometimes silly political allegory
“The First Omen” — 2.5 stars
Aside from an adequate supply of gross commercial elements, the Catholic horror tale “The First Omen” issues an allegorical warning about our current political climate.
A band of rogue Catholic leaders, concerned that so many people have rejected the church, decides that only the anti-Christ can succeed in bringing everyone into the fold, something they perceive that Christ can no longer do.
So, they simply switch sides and enthusiastically go against the very values and traditions they once staunchly supported. All they need is their new leader, the anti-Christ, yet to be begotten by old Beelzebub himself.
Borrowing lightly from Roman Polanski’s superior “Rosemary’s Baby,” this promising feature directorial debut of Arkasha Stevenson takes place in 1971, five years before Richard Donner’s 1976 “The Omen” introduced Satan-spawn Damien Thorn and turned a little-known biblical passage “the sign of the beast — 666” into a pop culture catchphrase.
“The First Omen” slogs along like congealed blood with Mark Koven’s creepy music (initially sounding like “A Summer Place” as composed by demons) compensating for a rather suspenseless first hour.
A few cheap jump-scares keep us awake.
One even drags out that moldy old “hand suddenly grabbing someone’s shoulder” cliché. Some are followed by, “Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you!”
(Don’t worry. You didn’t.)
Things pick up in the second hour, with a couple of clever twists, some retina-wrenching set designs (those candles look just like sharp teeth about to eat the church altar!) and an explosively gooey, go-for-broke performance from fearless lead actress Nell Tiger Free.
Free, a British cast staple from the series “Game of Thrones” and “Servant,” plays Margaret, a shy young American novitiate sent to Rome to work at an orphanage before she takes the veil under her lifelong friend Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy).
Right away, we sense something is not right.
An intimidating Sister Silvia (Spanish superstar Sonia Braga) looks as if she’s auditioning for the lead in “Wicked.” Unhinged Sister Anjelica (Ishtar Currie-Wilson) seems to be a few beads short of a rosary and proves it by replicating a shocking sacrifice from the original “Omen.”
The oldest orphan, Carlita (Nicole Sorace), draws strange pictures and suffers from disturbing visions just as Margaret did as a young orphan.
One day, a frazzled man (Ralph Ineson) accosts her, identifying himself as Father Brennan, and spews conspiratorial verbiage all over her, and insists she meet him at a hotel in Room 42 (which adds up to 6, right?).
Without telling anyone, she goes alone to a stranger’s shoddy hotel room in Rome at night just as he demanded. Really?
“The First Omen” features several eye-rolling moments like this, the oddest being when a workers’ street protest turns violent. So, the nuns take the orphans out of their safe building and lead them through the mayhem of fighting and car bombing.
OK, horror movies don’t always need to make sense, but some degree of realistic details goes a long way toward augmenting levels of genuine fright.
Or genuine gross-outs, such as Free’s movie-stealing scene (no spoilers) in which she puts her body though a spasmatic, hard-to-watch, full-body workout that rivals the angiography scene from “The Exorcist.”
Highland Park native David Seltzer reportedly whipped out the screenplay to the original “Omen” in a scant six weeks, laughing and cackling through every page.
When asked if he had advice for aspiring screenwriters, Seltzer acidly replied, “Yes, sell out much quicker than I did!”
At least this sometimes preposterous prequel works much better than those two inert, unscary “The Nun” movies.
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Starring: Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Sonia Braga, Nicole Sorace, Ishtar Currie-Wilson, Bill Nighy
Directed by: Arkasha Stevenson
Other: A Twentieth Century Studios theatrical release. Rated R for grisly images, nudity, violence. 120 minutes