To my little astonishment, “The First Omen”, a prequel to Richard Donner’s well-known horror film “The Omen” (1976), is more entertaining and interesting than I expected. As a matter of fact, the movie is one or two steps above “The Omen” as well as its following sequels and remake, mainly because it has much more style and mood in addition to having compelling modern touches to be savored and appreciated.

The story, which is set in the early June of 1971, is unfolded mainly via the viewpoint of Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free), a young American woman who comes to Rome for working at a Catholic orphanage and officially becoming a nun within a few days. Warmly greeted by her mentor Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy) right after her arrival in Rome, Margaret is soon sent to that orphanage in question, and then she is introduced to a bunch of nuns including Sister Silvia (Sônia Braga), the stern Abbess of the orphanage.

While Margaret is eager to be appointed as a servant of God as soon as possible, everything seems mostly fine around her, but, not so surprisingly, she begins to sense that there is something not so right about the orphanage. While many of the kids in her workplace are quite cheery and innocent to say the least, there is one adolescent girl who looks visibly disturbed from time to time, and there is also a rather odd young nun who does not seem to be right in her mind. Thanks to her rather wild roommate who will soon become a nun just like her, Margaret later comes to have a chance to ease herself a bit as having some naughty fun in the city along with her roommate at one night, but she keeps seeing or experiencing a series of disturbing stuffs nonetheless – especially when it looks like that disturbed orphan girl is not just imagining weird stuffs at all.

Of course, if you have ever watched “The Omen” or Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), you already have some idea on what is really going on around Margaret. The movie obediently connects itself with “The Omen” via a few main characters shared between them besides that evil Antichrist kid, but it is actually influenced more by Dario Argento’s classic horror film “Suspiria” (1977) and those Italian Giallo flicks during the 1970s. In addition, there is even an utterly wild moment later in the film which is clearly a homage to that infamous moment of sheer madness in Andrzej Żuławski’s cult horror film “Possession” (1981).

While deftly mixing classic genre stuffs into the story, the movie distinguishes itself via a number of modern touches associated with the recent female body horror films during the post-#MeToo era at present. I will not go into details here, but the movie becomes surprisingly thought-provoking in terms of themes and ideas as more of the conspiracy is revealed along the story, and there is even an intriguing possibility for spin-off development around the end of the film.

On the technical levels, the movie is frequently brimming with mood and details on the screen. The stylized ambience of the nighttime scenes in the film sometimes makes a striking contrast with the mundane atmosphere of its daytime scenes, and director/co-writer Arkasha Stevenson, who wrote the screenplay with Tim Smith and Keith Thomas, skillful serves us a number of spooky moments, which are thankfully based more on mood and suspense instead of resorting to perfunctory moments of cheap shock and awe. While you surely get several gruesome death scenes as expected, they are presented as the effective variations of the ones in “The Omen”, and I was certainly delighted when the score by Mark Korven dramatically quotes Jerry Goldsmith’s sensationally diabolical Oscar-winning score for the 1976 film more than once on the soundtrack.

Above all, the movie is equipped with a strong heroine we can really care about. Nell Tiger Free, who has been mostly known for her supporting turn in Apple TV+ series “Servant”, is engaging as ably illustrating her character’s emotional arc along the story, and her committed performance is the one of the main reasons why the predestined climax is emotionally intense instead of merely leading us to the opening part of “The Omen”. Although I have not watched “Servant” (I only remember her playing a minor supporting character in the HBO TV drama series “Game of Thrones”, by the way), Free fully demonstrates here that she is a new exciting talent to watch, and it will be interesting to see how she will advance further in next several years.

In case of several main cast members surrounding Free, they dutifully fill their respective parts as required. While Bill Nighy, Sônia Braga, Charles Dance, and Ralph Ineson are reliable as before despite their rather thankless supporting parts, Nicole Sorace, Maria Caballero, and Ishtar Currie Wilson actually stand out more on the screen, and Sorace is especially impressive during her several key scenes with Free.

In conclusion, “The First Omen” is a nice spooky surprise of this year, and Stevenson, who previously made two short films, establishes herself as another interesting horror filmmaker to watch via this solid feature debut work of hers. While David Gordon Green’s “The Exorcist: Believer” (2023) miserably crashed down along with its franchise in last year, “The First Omen” delightfully rejuvenates its franchise with some good ideas and potentials under Stevenson’s competent direction, and that is a considerable achievement in my humble opinion.