It’s always the same: after years of waiting for a pregnancy-focused nunsploitation film, three appear in as little as a month. The First Omen is a prequel to the 1976 seminal horror film about a little child who might be the devil incarnate. Other films that have been out recently include Immaculate, with Sydney Sweeney, who appears to have been struck by God; Deliver Us, which features Maria Vera Ratti expecting twins (one of whom is the Antichrist, the other the Second Coming).
To understand this movie, though, you don’t have to have seen the first one. Anyone with even a passing knowledge with horror films with religious themes will be able to recognise the recognizable character types and the use of numerous horror cliches, such as frightening children’s paintings. Could there be a lurking threat behind the shadowy garments hanging on the wall? Verify. Are young girls wearing white dresses singing a spooky tune? Verify. Do old engravings seem incredibly cursed to you? Naturally, of course! And we have a pretty nice cast of standard movie nuns populating the convent where most of the action takes place: strict mother superior Sister Silva (Sônia Braga), devout believer Sister Anjelica (Ishtar Currie-Wilson), best friend Luz (Maria Caballero), and novice nun Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), who is new to town.
Reaching the core of the plot after the signs and portents phase takes some time.
Nobody can casually toss out ripe lines like, “The miracle of life can be a messy business,” quite like Nighy. Bill Nighy makes a welcome appearance in full cassock as an urbane cardinal, while Free gives a sympathetic performance as the wide-eyed innocent who seems troubled by hints of a dark past.
All the necessary components are present, but it takes some time for the action to move past the portents and signs phase and into the actual plot. There’s a general feeling that less would have been more; the movie begs for more precise editing since far too many times, a scene ends without providing us with what we need. The grisly set-pieces (Birthing a monster! Convenient car catastrophe! Non-consensual C-section!) still adopt a gratifyingly no-half-measures approach, despite pacing concerns.