The First Omen (2024) For those of you who've spent many a restless, sleepless night wondering how Gregory Peck and Lee Remick ended up with the devil's baby in the 1976 "The Omen".......
......at long last, here are all your questions answered.
Top marks if to anyone who guessed baby Damien came from that Ole Debbil raping a nun.......in the form of a jumbo jackal......(we mean the Devil was jackal, not the nun...)
Ooops.....that was a spoiler, wasn't it?
Then again maybe not. 1974's "The Exorcist" kicked off an entire sub-genre of Catholicism horror movies......(and still going strong with the release of this new 'Omen' and 'Immaculata'.
So let us return to the early 70's in Rome, where sweetly innocent Amercan novice nun Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) gets thee-self to a nunnery........
Though under the watchful eye of her mentor Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy), you can bet your rosary beads there's devilish doings amongst the holy sisters.
'Omen' fans will take comfort in this film remembering to include all expected tropes of the series......and these include....
#1, Spectacularly gory, supposedly 'accidental' deaths, arranged by the Da Debbil with the intricate finesse of pranks gone horribly wrong......(that's right, Satan's still a wonderfully inventive practical joker, much like The Grim Reaper in all the 'Final Destination' films.....)
#2. A glorious homage to the gruesome suicide of Damien's nanny from the 1976 film. Nothing juices up the adrenalin like one of Da Debbil's minions going out in a blaze of glory.....
# 3. Deep, ominous liturgical chanting to set the mood, even throwing in a sampling of Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar-winning chorus-of-doom from the original film....
But to really set itself apart from the other 'Omen' films this one comes up with doozy of a reason for getting Sister Margaret knocked up by Da Debbil......
No, it's not an evil cabal of hardcore Satanists.......
According to this movie, the plot to pump out an Anti-Christ comes from the Church hierarchy itself. The holy Deep State within the Church worries about plunging attendence numbers.......so what better way to bring people back into the fold than the threat of.....Da Debbil!
Holy crap and Jesus H. Trump, is this movie telling us the Catholic Church cut a deal with Satan to front a public relations scam? With posters of Da Debbil, reading, "Get thine asses back in church or I'm comin' to get ya!"?
Brilliant. And so very much in the 1970's film atmosphere of a world beset by vast, "Parallax View" conspiracies.
Obviously, no surprises here, since the movie declared itself an origin story.....so it can only end with bouncing baby future Debbil Damian on his way to Gregory Peck.....but then nobody watches an 'Omen' movie for the clever plot turns....
If you like this stuff, and you're an 'Omen' completist, then you surely don't want to miss this new installment. For you folks, it's 3 stars (***).
But for anyone who finds Catholic Horror tiresome and overdone already, pray for a better movie to come along......
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