OUT NOW: The First Omen (Arkasha Stevenson, 2024)

In 1971, a young American nun in training, Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), arrives in Rome to take up a post at an orphanage.

Plagued by memories of her own abusive upbringing in a similar orphanage, Margaret takes an interest in troubled orphan Carlita (Nicole Sorace).

The pair’s growing rapport draws the disapproval of the other nuns, and Margaret finds herself ostracised.

As a series of strange events plague the orphanage, the trainee nun begins to feel herself going mad…

A few weeks ago, I binged the original Omen movies (1976-1981). I had never seen them before, although I was aware of the concept and the iconography.

I was not even aware this movie existed until the week before it came out, and it was not until I had finished those earlier movies that my curiosity was piqued.

I was also aware that Immaculate was out, and boasted a vaguely similar concept, so I decided to make a double bill of them.

While it’s ending acts as a segue into the ‘76 original, The First Omen feels like it’s own beast.

There are a few echoes and callbacks, incl a nasty addition to the franchise’s list of diabolically inspired deaths.

The film embraces its early 70s setting, setting up the era’s sense of rebellion against the status quo, and using that as the catalyst for the film’s villains.

This is a paranoid conspiracy thriller that ties itself to both the 70s, and the more contemporary conflicts over a woman’s right to choose.

If the film has an influence it is Rosemary’s Baby - Margaret’s flashback to her impregnating recalls the earlier film’s nightmarish copulation.

One could even draw connections between both films’ depictions of Catholicism, and the way that has shaped the central characters’ approach to sex and their own bodies.

A theme that seems to come to the fore in the Omen sequels is the idea of people being attracted to facilitating Damien’s rise for their benefit.

This may be the result of narrative ellipsis, but I got the sense that while a certain people are genuine acolytes (Miss Braylock), others like Robert Foxworth’s unscrupulous executive in Omen II would be looking for other tools for their own power if the Antichrist was not an option.

That attraction to power is remoulded in this film. Instead the film becomes a metaphor for the ways in which ageing power structures will often side with violent forces which share their animosity for change.

There is no satanic conspiracy. Instead, Damien is directly tied to the upheavals of the time in which he was born.

Rather than satanists, it is a faction of the Catholic Church that sees the future Damien as a way to scare people back to God. The Antichrist becomes a literal boogeyman for restoring the power of the Catholic Church.

The film is well cast. 

He is only onscreen for a few scenes, but Bill Nighy is cast against type as Margaret’s mentor, lending his charm as a misdirect.

When his monstrousness is finally revealed, Nighy’s warmth is rendered in a new light.

Sonia Braga is almost part of the art direction, her iconic face rendered a sinister mask in a nun’s habit.

More fundamentally to the whole experience, The First Omen never feels like a prequel. There is a glimpse of Gregory Peck, but it is so minor it never feels like the movie is bending itself into a pretzel to fit the beginning of The Omen.

While it teases a follow-up I did not care for, on its own, The First Omen is a terrific picture.

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The Omen

Damien: Omen II

Omen III - The Final Conflict

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Omen III - The Final Conflict (Graham Baker, 1981)

Damien Thorn (Sam Neill) is now a man, with the world at his feet.

But with ultimate power in his reach, Damien is aware that a new messiah is about to be born - and with it, his demise.

Determined to fight this inevitable fall, Damien organises a plot to kill every newborn who could grow up to destroy him. 

This movie is underwhelming.

There is no way around it.

In its favour, new director Graham Baker does try to keep the film to the low key style of the 1976 picture - or the filmmakers were so bereft of ideas that the film comes off more low key than intended.

Aside from a Rube Goldberg-esque assassination at the start, the assassinations are not that interesting.

There was something uncanny about the setpieces in the first film. The second film went bigger, and perhaps the filmmakers of the third film felt there was a ceiling on how over the top they could go.

This film has little flare, and the deaths that take place are uninspired.

It is hard to compare this film to the others, because (to its credit) it tries to do its own thing. Even Jerry Goldsmith is on the blank slate, delivering a completely new score - not that gothic but also feels inappropriately grandiose for how small it feels.

The film’s key failing is that it does not know where the horror in its story is, and how to convey it.

The film is centred around Damien, now played by Sam Neill as a fully self-aware and all powerful Antichrist. 

Neill does his best, and there are a few moments where he creates a sense of simmering menace. 

Sadly, it is hard to be afraid of him.

Spending so much time with Damien dissipates any sense of mystery or powerful. He just comes across as a rich guy.

There is also a lack of scope. We are told the world is in chaos, but we do not see any of that chaos.

The Omen managed to couch its terrors in familiar situations and settings - the family.

The third Omen flirts with horror concepts - altho of a magnitude that is not exactly workable for a big budget mainstream Hollywood thriller.

Damien’s plan is to prevent the Second Coming of the messiah by pulling a King Herod and murdering all babies born under a specific constellation.

There is also a collection of monks who have found the daggers of Megiddo. 

Damien is so omnipotent and their demises so underwhelming the film almost plays like a parody (but the scenes are not silly enough).

Despite Damien’s fear of being overthrown by a new Christ - a flip on the dynamic of the previous films’ leads - the film is never able to make him an engaging antagonist.

One of the compelling elements about Omen II was the way it treated Damien as a kid wrestling with what he will have to sacrifice.

Omen III’s adult iteration is at the height of his power, with no doubts about himself. He has no arc.

It would have probably worked better if the film had focused around the monks, with Damien as an unstoppable villain.

If the film had followed the same course as its predecessor, there is an alternative version of this movie based around Damien which could have worked.

Imagine an Omen III where Damien is trying to fight his destiny by using his company and connections to help the world. Inadvertently, he fails upwards (downwards?) to become the Antichrist.

But that is not the movie we ended up with.

Aside from a wonderfully spiteful final line, The Final Conflict is a sad down note for the original Omen franchise.

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The Omen

Damien: Omen II

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Damien: Omen II (Don Taylor, 1978)

Following the tragic events of the first film, Damien (Jonathan Scott-Taylor) was adopted by his father’s brother Richard Thorn (William Holden).

Growing up with Richard, his wife Ann (Lee Grant) and his cousin Mark (Lucas Donat), Damien is starting to become aware of his destiny.

While Damien struggles with his fate, Richard is plagued by a series of strange tragedies. 

And they all seem to have something to do with his nephew…

Writing a summary for this movie was hard.

Part of the issue is that The Omen happened. So the movie tries to meet both challenges, by splitting itself in two for new and returning viewers.

For returning audiences, the film brings Damien to the fore. He is no longer a small child, but a twelve-year-old at a military academy. 

While the finale of the original ended on Damien holding hands with the American president, teasing his rise to the top, Damien scales back slightly.

Here, the character is positioned as a member of American high society, yet only vaguely aware of how different he is.

For new viewers, the film offers a re-heated version of the previous film’s plot, as Richard discovers what Damien really is.

It is the law of diminishing returns, but there is still a lot to like about Omen II.

One of the ironies of this film is that Don Taylor’s director’s credit plays over an extended sequence filmed by his predecessor Mike Hodges (Get Carter), who was fired after the first few weeks of filming.

With both filmmakers passed, it’s hard to see what kind of film we may have missed. 

While it does follow the formula of the original, The film repositions the narrative POV around the title character.

At first, the characterisation seems a bit contradictory - between knowing and completely innocent.

It lacks the focus and sense of building tension - while Robert Thorn was the centre, Damien feels more like an ensemble piece.

 

The death scenes are well-mounted, but the film often feels like a more expansive rehash of the original, down to the casting of William Holden, who had been up for the role of Thorne but backed out.

But when the film treats Damien as a human kid, it gains something it is missing - stakes.

There is a moral ambiguity to chunks of Damien’s narrative, that feels more complicated and suspenseful than the inevitability of Richard learning the truth.

The scene that really crystallises what works about the movie is Damien’s confrontation with his cousin Mark. While the pair have not shared a lot of screen time, the dynamic between the characters is that they have grown up brothers. 

When he pleads for Mark to join him, it does not feel like Damien means his cult. Actor Scott-Taylor shows genuine sadness and fear that someone he loves is rejecting him.

In scenes like this, the film teases something akin to a Last Temptation of the AntiChrist (Last Hope?), as Damien wrestles between living as a human and his destiny.

If the film had spent more time on showing Damien as part of his family, the revelation of his destiny might have served as enough of a vehicle for suspense - not based on some abstract idea of Damien’s future misdeeds - but on a secret destroying a loving family.

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The Omen

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The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)

After his child dies shortly after birth, Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) is offered the chance to adopt a newborn.

Keeping the adoption a secret from his wife (Lee Remick), Richard raises the child, named Damien.

As Damien grows, something strange is happening.

People are trying to warn the Thorns about their son.

But they keep dying…

I am not the biggest fan of supernatural horror.

I have seen The Exorcist (the director’s cut) but it did not resonate. 

With a new Omen in theatres, I decided to check out the original Omen.

 

Richard Donner’s watchword on Superman was verisimilitude - one can see a similar approach here. 

Apparently Donner wanted to steer the film toward a more ambiguous approach, where it was not clear if Damien was satanic.

He lost the battle, but the film benefits from how understated his approach to the supernatural is: the film’s uncanny moments generally take place in daylight, in wide shots that create the starkest juxtaposition with the film’s horror. 

The casting of Gregory Peck, that most distinguished and credible American film stars as a man powerless to stop what is happening, is a master stroke.

In an era when familiar icons and institutions were either being discredited or questioned, the image of Atticus Finch driven to the extreme act of murdering his child gives the climax a meta textual punch.

Gilbert Taylor’s chilly, diffuse cinematography lends the film a cool, detached view of the story, while the film’s accidental(?) deaths anticipate the intricate set-pieces of the Final Destination series.

  

There is an elegant simplicity to the way the film unfurls, and the way it grounds the supernatural by treating it matter-of-factly.

While lauded (justifiably) for its score, what is striking about the film’s approach is the lack of score.

The filmmakers let the various uncanny happenings take place with only diegetic sound.

One of Donner’s gifts was casting, and the casting and presentation of Harvey Spencer Stephens as Damien is exceptional. Its success becomes more pronounced in light of the sequels, which try to make Damien a defined character pushing the narrative forward.

It is not a reflection on the succeeding actors, but more a case of executing a defined concept. The child is basically a plot device, a catalyst for events. 

Mostly non-verbal, Harvey Spencer Stephens’ Damien is largely on the edges of scenes. There is something unstudied about Stephens’ reactions, a quality of child-like naïveté that the filmmakers recomtectualise into something more sinister.

He never seems that aware or genuinely malevolent. He seems more like a kid, teasing and parents.

There is a horror movie version of the Kuleshov effect going on with the way this performance is constructed.

 

Damien is at his most elliptical, most unknowable.

And when juxtaposed with the film’s uncanny, paranoid atmosphere, Stephens’ grinning tyke becomes genuinely unsettling.

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OUT NOW: Abigail (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2024)

A group of kidnappers have taken a wealthy man’s daughter (Alisha Weir) hostage.

Hiding out in a house in the woods, the gang quickly realise their hostage is a vampire.

I try to avoid trailers. I find it helps add to the experience. I wish I had the opportunity with Abigail, because I have seen the trailer for this show up multiple times in front of other movies.

While I understand the need to sell the premise, the trailer leaves little to the imagination.

Riffing on the Dracula mythos, Abigail is an enjoyable genre-bender.

 

The film is well-cast, and fairly amusing.

It is not as singular as it feels like it should be - the surreal image of a blood-soaked ballerina starts to feel a tad repetitive, and when the film tries to dig into its characters, and turn into a story about broken family dynamics, it feels a little too late.

Dan Stevens has fun as a smug scumbag, Kevin Durand finds a little humanity in the film’s musclehead and Kathryn Newton has fun as a self-absorbed hacker.

Melissa Barerra, star of Radio Silence’s Scream entries, anchors proceedings with such ease her old franchises’ braintrust are probably regretting their decision to fire her last year.

For a while the movie is fun as a farcical take on Alien, with the team of hard asses stumbling around the mansion while being hunted, ambushed and/or tricked by a centuries-old vampire.

In the home stretch, the film decides to become a story about absentee parents, by trying to tie Joey to Abigail, who spends centuries trying to win her father’s approval.

This would work if Abigail herself was given any definition outside of what we see - and what we see is a fairly typical vampire. She presents herself as an innocent in order to lower her victims’ guard, and then shows no compunction in sadistically maiming and torturing the main characters.

The film wants us to care about Abigail, but it does not feel like a complicated attempt to juggle audience sympathies. Instead, it feels like a different movie: Joey (Barrera) and Abigail start relating to each other as though the events of the movie have not happened.

Overall, Abigail is fun. But it always feels like it is a few steps from greatness: somewhat inspired in its use of vampire tropes, more dramatically organic, and, frankly, a bit funnier.

But as is, it is a good time.

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