THE FIRST OMEN

A prequel to the original 1976 film follows Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) a nun from Massachusetts who comes to Italy to take her vows to become a nun. Although while at the convent, she suspects their may be something more at play, particularly with a young girl who has trouble fitting in with her peers, Carlita (Nicole Sorace). In some respects, the film has some of the same beats as the original such as someone who puts the main character on the path that something isn't right and only they can seek out the answers. In the original it was photographer Jennings played by David Warner and here it's defrocked priest Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson). In addition, the same shocking scene of someone hanging themselves for the child, saying "it's all for you" is redone. Whether these were homages or simply parts of the story that were borrowed from the original, I'm not quite sure? In saying this, the story feels somewhat similar. My expectations for this were somewhat low as the trailer didn't do much to gain my interest but I took a chance on it and it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. It also does tie in rather nicely with the original towards the end. Although, and I know it wasn't planned but rather coincidental, but this also plays very similarly to the recent IMMACULATE release starring Sydney Sweeney. Between the two I prefer IMMACULATE but the same underlying political statement is still made and I shouldn't be surprised at this point. We're coming up on the 2 year anniversary of Roe V. Wade being overturned and as such, writers have had time to write scripts in protest of it and those have recently been turned into films by these latest 2 examples. They're still not going to convince me with their rhetoric and wish they're take the Disney approach: stick to storytelling rather than preaching. 6/10