Day 25: The First Omen
With only a few days left before our 31 Days of Fear comes to an end, I started thinking about what movies would make great final additions to the list. As I sat there trying to decide, The First Omen came to mind. I remember seeing it in cinemas back in 2024 without having watched any of the previous films in the series.
Luckily for me, it works perfectly fine on its own since it’s technically a prequel to the entire franchise. So even if you haven’t seen any of the other Omen movies, you can still dive right in and have a solid experience.
Directed by Arkhasa Stevenson, in her directorial debut, the story follows Margaret Daino, a novice nun from America who travels to Rome to work at an orphanage before beginning a life in service of the church. What follows are a series of disturbing events centered around the church’s desire to bring about the Anti-Christ so that people would turn to the church for salvation. Let’s get into this review.
The movie opens with Father Brennan questioning Father Harris about a strange conspiracy within the Church. Inside a confessional, they talk about a mysterious baby named Scianna, and Harris admits that the child was born from a dark ritual involving Satan himself. Before Brennan can process what he’s just heard, things take a nasty turn. A construction accident above the chapel sends a metal pole crashing through the window, slicing the back of Father Harris’s head wide open. It’s a shocking, bloody start that immediately sets the tone for what’s to come.
From there we meet Margaret as she arrives in rome. She’s a bright-eyed young woman who seems excited to devote her life to Christ and the church.
