The First Omen (2024)

Warning: there will be (some) spoilers for this as well as for Immaculate!

1971. Young Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), raised as an orphan by the Catholic church, is sent to Rome to take her vows as a nun in a convent-orphanage. After early moments of genuine female companionship with the other nuns and an invitation to the pre-vow wild life by the place’s other novitiate, the not terribly nun-like Luz (Maria Cabellero), Margaret’s time at the nunnery turns increasingly nightmarish.

There appears to be something very wrong with one of the orphans, Carlita (Nicole Sorace), and the older nuns’ treatment of the child seems rather extraordinarily strange and cruel, particularly when you compare it to their usual behaviour towards the children in their care. Margaret herself is increasingly plagued by visions connected to creepy demon fingers touching her, bad sexual experiences and pregnancy; nightmare and reality become increasingly difficult to keep apart.

When the rogue priest Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson), contacts Margaret with a highly unlikely tale about what’s really going on at the orphanage, our protagonist isn’t quite ready to believe him yet, but she’s certainly beginning to look at the things that might be hidden in plain sight all around her.

Apart from movies about spiders, this is apparently a year for movies about young women having to fight the not so tender attentions of Catholic Church breeding programs (one would be tempted to defend the Church against horror scriptwriters, but given its history, it has to fend for itself there). Though only one of the latter movies has a scene where a woman smashes the little baby Jesus, second edition, with a rock. The movie at hand is not that movie.

But seriously, even though The First Omen does share quite a bit with its out of wedlock sister film Immaculate – namely the feminism, the Church breeding program and the palpable love for the weirder corners of 70s horror – it does have a feel of its own.

Mostly, that’s because director Arkasha Stevenson’s visual imagination quickly transcends the quotes from the original Omen, numerous stylish Italian horror films, and 70s horror in general, and instead starts using the visual elements taken from there to create a language of horror that feels personal to her as a filmmaker.

Stevenson has an indelible eye for the freaky shot, for short, metaphorically loaded tableaux, a command of mood that drags her protagonist – as well as at least this viewer - ever further in the direction of dread and the weird. The big horror sequences don’t just work as set pieces, but are always also metaphorically loaded for bear, creating the kind of film that does little of its metaphorical work through plot or character work and instead puts all emphasis on mood and style as carriers. Again, very much in the spirit of the era of horror filmmaking it builds much of its aesthetic grounding on.

I wouldn’t say the film’s subtextual interests are terribly original: a young woman trapped in a system that only sees her as a breeder for the men that are going to be really important; a sense of paranoia where nearly every paranoid thought our protagonist has is based on truth, and where even her own identity doesn’t truly belong to her; childbirth as a form of body horror. However, the way it puts these interests into movement, colour, and sound makes them feel like things you’ve never seen or heard about before quit this way. Which is quite the trick in a prequel to a franchise that on paper really didn’t need one.

Three Films Make A Post: Little girl. Big psycho.

Psycho Goreman (2020): This weird-ass gory horror tokusatsu comedy by Steven “Manborg” Kostanski proudly stands in the tradition of comparable weird-ass movies from Japan. At least half of the film’s jokes are very funny indeed, the monster costumes are rubbery fun, and the acting’s generally fitting the tone. However, like it is with a lot of movies of this kind, from the US, Japan, or elsewhere, the other half of the jokes fall flat like blood-encrusted pancakes. The other big problem is that there’s simply not enough plot or material for a ninety minute plus movie, so the middle part drags pretty badly; which is particularly unfortunate when much of it could have been excised without any losses to the movie.

The Pond (2021): This Serbian, but English language, movie by Petar Pasic starring Marco Canadea as a Professor on leave after a family tragedy who is either suffering from a nervous breakdown or has stumbled upon a rift in our understanding of the world – or both - is a frustrating experience. There are some scenes and shots here that will probably haunt me for quite a while, but the film’s total commitment to a “everything on screen is a metaphor” type of the Weird also makes it hard to wade through, with little but metaphor to guide a viewer through it. Some of these visual metaphors are also really coming down on the side of the pretentious to unintentionally funny. Particularly all the fish business is just plain silly.

Still, there’s something there sometimes, an otherworldly quality to the staging and the shot composition that does make this one worth watching at least once, in my eyes.

King Rocker (2020): At times, there’s also something pretentious about this documentary about Robert Lloyd (of The Nightingales not-really fame) by Michael Cumming and comedian Stewart Lee, too. Particularly the film’s attempt to mirror Lloyd and a King Kong statue (don’t ask) is pretty strained and leading nowhere, and made even worse by Lee (who is on-screen as much as Lloyd) making jokes about it, suggesting that the filmmakers actually knew that this bit was a terrible idea but couldn’t come up with any better way to frame things. The film’s also a bit too chummy at times, with some diversions that really go nowhere fast (what’s the reading of parts of an unfilmed comedy TV script good for, exactly?), and scenes of Lee and Lloyd being drunk, middle-aged buddies that go on way too long.

However, it is also a treasure trove of interviews and raconteuring (that’s a word now) with and other footage of a genuinely interesting guy who made a lot of just as genuinely interesting music, presented with great sense of love and respect, which makes up for all of the film’s flaws.