Unquiet
Things

The First Omen hit theaters this year, promising to reveal the dark origins of the infamous Antichrist story that launched the franchise. But before we get into how this prequel manages to make satanic prophecies boring (how??), I should mention that my experience with The Omen series is pretty much limited to a maybe-memory.

Okay, so here’s the thing about The Omen franchise and me – my earliest memory of it might not even be a real memory? I was like five or six, wandering around my grandmother’s house, and I stumbled into a room where the TV was playing what I think was The Omen. All I remember are Dobermans barking at a gravesite, and to this day, thinking about that scene still terrifies me, and I won’t go anywhere near Doberman… but honestly, who knows if that was even the right movie? My sister claims I made her watch it with me when she was thirteen, but I have zero recollection of that. Then again, I barely remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, which is actually one of the main reasons I do this whole October horror blog thing – and really, why I blog at all. It’s like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for future-me to remember that hey, I existed and did some stuff.

The First Omen commits what might be horror’s greatest sin: it’s boring. Set in 1971 Rome, we follow Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), an American novitiate preparing to take her final vows at a Catholic orphanage. The setup promises dark secrets, religious conspiracy, and supernatural horror. What it delivers instead is a paint-by-numbers exercise in predictability.

And let me tell you, I called EVERYTHING. Not because I’m some kind of genius film critic or horror savant – this movie is just that obvious. At every turn, even in its most specific moments, The First Omen telegraphs its punches so clearly you’d think it was reading from a “How to Make a Religious Horror Movie” handbook. Margaret’s roommate? Saw it coming. The orphanage’s dark secrets? Called it. The true nature of her own existence? I’d sketched out the entire revelation in my head halfway through the film.

There’s a car accident scene. And not just that this accident happened, and how, and when, but even very specifically what ends up clutched in Margaret’s hands afterward… I saw it coming from a mile away. Actually… there are TWO car accidents and I predicted them both! At this point, I was basically playing Movie Plot Bingo and getting blackout every time.

Bill Nighy shows up as Cardinal Lawrence, which, of course, is great, and in fact, my sister and I joked that this review should merely consist of: “Last night, I saw a movie with Bill Nighy in it.” Nell Tiger Free genuinely tries her best with what she’s given, bringing an earnest vulnerability to Margaret that the movie honestly doesn’t deserve. But when you can predict every “shocking” revelation, every “surprise” twist, and every “dramatic” turn, it’s kind of hard to stay invested.

Here’s the thing about prequels, especially ones dealing with well-established mythologies like The Omen: we already know where this story ends up. We know about Damien, we know about the whole Antichrist business, we know the broad strokes of how this all plays out. So if you’re going to drag us back to the beginning, you better make that beginning absolutely spectacular. You need to show us something we didn’t expect, give us some mind-blowing revelation that makes us see the entire franchise in a new light, or at least tell the story in such a compelling way that we forget we know the ending.

Instead, The First Omen just… connects the dots. It’s like watching someone fill out a paint-by-numbers picture where you can already see all the numbers. Sure, technically you’re seeing how it all began, but in the least interesting way possible. It’s not just that I could predict every twist and turn – it’s that the movie seems completely uninterested in doing anything surprising or meaningful with its position as an origin story. Why even bother telling us how it all started if you’re not going to make that beginning remarkable?

You know what’s funny? That maybe-memory of catching glimpses of the original Omen at my grandmother’s house is more interesting than anything in this prequel. At least that experience left enough of an impression that I’m still wondering about it decades later. This new movie? I’m already struggling to remember parts of it, and I just watched it.

This is exactly why I do these 31 Days of Horror posts. Because otherwise, this movie would just blend into the fog of “oh yeah, I think I saw that once” memories. At least now I have written proof that I sat through it and somehow managed to become a horror movie fortune teller in the process. Not because I’m special – this movie is just THAT predictable.

You know what’s weird? I didn’t set out to watch religious horror this October. My viewing plans were all about late ’90s nostalgia, old apartment-based creepiness, and my ongoing fascination with horror that deals with media, technology, and archivists. I even developed a short-lived Osgood Perkins phase (before Long Legs maybe killed that particular obsession). But somehow, I’ve found myself knee-deep in devil babies and Catholic dread.

Just think about it: we’ve had The Sentinel’s watchful priest guarding an actual portal to hell, Apartment 7A‘s devil-baby cult shenanigans, the Catholic Church’s involvement in Grotesquerie, and Evil‘s X-Files-but-make-it-Catholic investigations into religious phenomena. And now here’s The First Omen, arriving like some kind of lazy, predictable cherry on top of this unplanned religious horror sundae.

Maybe it’s not just me. Religious horror seems to be having a moment right now, which makes sense in its own weird way. In times of uncertainty (and wow wow wow do we have lots of those), people tend to grapple with bigger questions about faith, evil, and what lies beyond. Plus, there’s something eternally compelling about taking the symbols and structures meant to comfort us and turning them into sources of terror. Though I wish The First Omen had done something more interesting with these elements than just checking off boxes from the Religious Horror For Dummies handbook.