The First Omen - 4K Digital Review

[Michael Scott]

The First Omen

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras: :
Final Score:


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Movie
I’m going to admit that I was Omen’d out after 2006’s The Omen remake with Julia Stiles. The 1976 film is a bonafide classic horror movie in the same vein as The Exorcist. And just like The Exorcist, we watched the franchise get sequeled to death as they made more and more ludicrous sequels that get weirder and weirder. The 2006 film was OOOOOKKKK, but nothing special, and the whole “the devil is the badguy!!” supernatural horror genre had sort of played itself out in the 1980s. The horror genre had moved on from the 70s, and so had the audience. Maybe I’m jaded, but I look back on the “the devil is the scary baddy!” as more nostalgic than I do scary, so the genre feels played out to me.

Now, all of that to say that I had next to ZERO expectations of The First Omen as most sequels that are THIS far removed from the original just suck plain and simple. The previous looked almost hilariously cheesy, and I actually almost didn’t do the review itself. However, after watching the 2024 flick I have to eat some crow. The First Omen is not a great film that will go down in the history books, but it is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than it has any right to be, and way better than any expectations I had for it. It’s creepy, got some great nostalgic ambiance thanks to the cinematography, and it did something that a horror movie hasn’t done to me in a long time….that is, actually leave me feeling disturbed and uncomfortable.

Acting as a direct prequel to The Omen 1976, The First Omen jumps back in time a few years to deal with Damien’s mother Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) before her untimely demise. The film starts us out in 1971, with Sister Margaret getting ready to take her vows to the church and dedicate herself as a nun. However, she is still plagued by visions from her youth, as well as hounded by excommunicated Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson) who swears she has a connection to a dark and disturbing young orphan named Carlita (Nicole Sorace). In a bit of an info dump, Father Brennan informs Sister Margaret of “the plan” that we all know from The Omen. A plan in which a dark sect of the church is trying to bring forth the anti- in hopes of controlling and manipulating the being, hoping to spread just ENOUGH darkness to force people back into the church pew and believing in the holy Father once more. However, he fears that the young girl Carlita may be the mother of said anti-, and begs sister Margaret’s help in gleaning enough information before he can act on stopping the abomination before it’s even born.

As I said, I had literally ZERO expectations for what I thought would be a garbage prequel to the original classic. It had a first time director with no real film experience (as a feature film director at least), and these sorts of films are mostly jump scares and no bite. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The film thrives off of ambiance and misdirection, even though we all know that Sister Margaret HAS to be Damien’s mother. As such, the film focuses more on disturbing imagery and symbolism, pushing a deeply visually disturbing film that actually creeped me out (that “birth” scene vision near the first half an hour point had me in full “what the literal beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppp?!” mode) and culminates with a visceral horrifying final 20 minute encounter with the monsters orchestrating it all that made the entire film worth seeing.

Is The First Omen a classic to the original? Is it a great sequel? No, I absolutely don’t believe that. But it WAS way better than I actually expected it to be, and is on par with at least the 2nd film in the franchise back in the early 80s. That alone says something on a franchise that hasn’t been touched in 18 years and had everything stacked against it. Nell Tiger Free is mesmerizing as the tortured miss Margaret, and even though Charles Dance and Bill Nighy are only in the film for a few minutes, they completely steal the few scenes they’re in.




Rating:

Rated R for violent content, grisly/disturbing images, and brief graphic nudity.




Video:

Here’s where I give my normal disclaimer for a digital stream like The First Omen. That being, since a digital stream like this is highly bandwidth dependent (and the quality of the app you choose to stream it through) I’ll refrain from giving an actual score to the video, but rather just give my opinions based upon my streaming experience. From what I could see the image is very nice, with a very heavy yellowed and amber shaded visual aesthetic reminiscent of 1970s films. The flick is deeply dark, with huge swathes of nothing but yellow and gray as the only colors on screen. As such the blacks look good, but I noticed some loss of detail level when the yellow hue got a little TOO intense. Blacks are deep and inky for the most part, and when splashes of blood or other primary colors do come on screen they have a very dark tinge to them (blood was much more dark maroon than your typical red). Banding was of course present, but I very rarely come across a 4K stream that doesn’t suffer from banding due to compression. Overall, this looks really nice, but also very heavily stylized.








Audio:

The Dolby Atmos track that I used with Fandango Now (previously VUDU) seemed to be a solid performer, but much like most of the streaming Atmos track from Disney/Fox it was recorded a tad low in volume (although not much). After level matching it provided a very robust and atmospheric track that focuses on heavy hitting bass for those intense scenes (the car crash where Paulo dies, the thudding of the ceremony at the end etc.) as well as creepy and subtle use of the surrounds. Dialog is crisp and clean as expected, though I did have to boost the center channel volume just a hair for some scenes. All in all, a nice track, though it did feel a bit “streaming thin” at times.







Extras:

• The Mystery of Margaret – Join director Arkasha Stevenson and stars Nell Tiger Free, Bill Nighy and Maria Caballero as they dive into the character of Margaret, her relationships with other characters, and how she’s manipulated while trying to solve the film’s horrifying mystery.
• The Director’s Vision – Director Arkasha Stevenson talks about her love of horror films, the opportunity to expand on The Omen legacy, and crafting The First Omen entirely through a female lens. She also describes shooting in Rome, and the cast recounts working with Arkasha.
• Signs of The First Omen – Join the director and talented artists as they reveal some of the symbolism within the set designs and the costumes. Learn how the use of practical effects blurs the line between what is real and what is not in The First Omen’s terrifying world.

Final Score: ​

Yeah, I still can’t believe I came out of the viewing with a good experience. I FULLY expected to loathe every second of this film and actually had the exact opposite experience I was predicting. The First Omen is moody, atmospheric, and very creepy despite a few over the top cheesy scenes (the water breaking scene actaully had me chuckling). Sure it’s not exactly high art, but I had a lot of fun and thought it was definitely a worthy attempt at going back to an iconic franchise (well, at least the first one is) without tarnishing the legacy. Sadly this is the only 4K release out there due to Fox only releasing the film on Blu-ray in terms of physical media, and I would actually love to pick this up in 4K if Fox ever decides to release it. Fun Watch, nothing more.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Nell Tiger Free, Ralph Ineson, Sonia Braga
Directed by: Arkasha Stevenson
Written by: Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson, Keith Thomas
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos
Subtitles: English
Studio: Disney/Fox
Rated: R
Runtime: 119 Minutes
Digital Release Date: May 28th, 2023

Recommendation: Fun Watch