When horror fans talk about The First Omen, Arkasha Stevenson‘s wildly entertaining and stunningly elegant prequel to The Omen, they tend to focus on one scene in particular.
As the film reaches its climax its protagonist, Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), realizes that she is pregnant with the literal spawn of Satan, and in one of the most striking horror moments of the 2020s so far, seizes and writhes and growls in the middle of a Roman street while her belly distends, signalling that she’s doomed to deal with this baby no matter what.
It’s a remarkable moment of performance, and a terrific tribute to the one-take wonder that is Isabelle Adjani‘s signature Possession moment, but for me, it’s not actually the most interesting piece of Free’s work in the film. That comes much earlier when, as a young novitiate nun newly arrived in Rome, she lets her roommate and fellow novice Luz (Maria Caballero) take her out for dancing and drinking. Tipsy, scantily dressed, and overwhelmed by what’s around her, Margaret allows a young man named Paolo (Andrea Arcangeli) to lure her out onto the dance floor for something seductive, dangerous, and – though she doesn’t know it yet – terrifying.
Rewatching the film this week, I was lost in Nell Tiger Free’s eyes in this moment, because she’s holding so much there. Margaret is intrigued, thrilled, and eager. She’s also terribly frightened and, as Free’s movements suggest, seemingly not entirely in control of her own body. As a young woman who’s done nothing but live as virtuously as possible for years, she is caught between two worlds, her feet carrying her into uncharted territory.
The First Omen is unique among the other films in its franchise, in no small part because of its decision to center the narrative entirely on a woman, particularly a woman brought up in the innately patriarchal corridors of the Catholic Church to trust in a system poised to betray her. Like Mary, the Mother of God, Margaret has given herself over to the labors and burdens of her faith, finding salvation in her calling to serve. And like Mary, she will be called to bear a savior, only to be pushed to the back of the narrative when her job is done.
But Margaret is not so easily dismissed. That look in Nell Tiger Free’s eyes as she approaches the dance floor, stepping out of one world and into another, indicates the start of something much more, a kind of chrysalis state from which she will emerge forever changed, and not just because of her impending motherhood. It’s a rebirth, and because Easter is both a holiday centered on fertility and the bloom of spring and a holiday devoted to resurrection and new life, it makes The First Omen the perfect horror film to turn into an Easter viewing tradition.
Easter, like every other major holiday in Christendom, is a time of symbols, some of them pagan and some of them relatively new. From the cross to the eggs to the budding flora, it is all an aesthetic appreciation of new life, both spiritual and biological, and because The First Omen is a horror film, Stevenson and co-writers Tim Smith and Keith Thomas immediately latch on to many of those symbols to twist them for their own purposes.
The promise of children living in the orphanage where Margaret starts work seems to be all about new life and fresh starts, and yet the nuns there, led by Sister Silva (Sonia Braga), seem devoted to punishment and order more than celebration and potential. Margaret’s own sexuality, carefully obscured by her faith but emerging nonetheless, becomes both a tool of oppression for those manipulating her and a way to blame Margaret herself for any pain she’s about to experience. Even the nun’s wimples (the white headpiece that runs from their neck all the way over the top of their head) are perverted, converted to sinister black hoods for dark purposes. But even beyond symbolism, there’s the way Stevenson is able to twist gorgeously rendered shots of Christian ritual and architecture into something frightening.
The most famous of these moments is Margaret at prayer, framed by two long iron candelabra that resemble jaws studded with sharp teeth, but that’s far from the only example. Every frame in the film is packed with movement and depth, which serves not just to up the ante on visual motifs but to create the sense that something might lurk in the shadows, or just out of the corner of your eye, in every single frame.
Because it’s a film about a nun who’s unwittingly impregnated with the Antichrist, The First Omen‘s focus on fertility and its light and dark sides also makes it a great Easter film. There is undeniably a part of Margaret that delights in what happens when she’s unleashed, when she lets herself free of the moral codes by which she’s lived her whole life, even slightly, even if guilt follows. More importantly, though, the horror elements of the film zero in on the contradictions of the powerful people who guide Margaret’s path. Like the Mother of Christ before her, she is simultaneously expected to endure the pains and restrictions of childbirth (in truly horrific fashion) while also withholding all sexual pleasure. In the early days of Christianity, Church Fathers went to great lengths to argue that Mary remained a virgin for life. Here, while she might not be a virgin, Margaret is expected to live the same kind of life and be revered as a Mother of the New Church.
Which brings us to the most potent element of The First Omen, at least where Easter is concerned. Like every other Christian holiday, symbol, or piece of doctrine, Easter has often been used as a cudgel, a blunt instrument designed to break up dissent, repress believers, and allow the powerful to take advantage of the masses. Margaret’s experience in The First Omen is the ultimate example of precisely that kind of manipulative thinking.
She is pulled in many directions at once, forced into compliance while also given glimpses of the life she could be living without the church’s cudgel hanging over her head, and Stevenson is a smart enough filmmaker to be sure that we always see the distinction. More than that, though, Stevenson uses this power imbalance as the platform for a different kind of resurrection, a kind in which a novice nun pushed into a pregnancy she didn’t want gets to reclaim something of her narrative by the end.
Margaret is, for better and for worse, reborn by the end of this movie. She is Risen, and for horror fans, that’s cause to celebrate.
The First Omen is currently available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.
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