Ron Does Stuff

Right off the bat, I will say that I have not watched the original Omen, the sequels, or the remake. It’s just that this movie showed up on one of the streaming sites I’m subscribed to and since there’s still light out I thought, “Why not?”

Let’s see if I regret this decision or not!

I got to be honest, when this movie started out with Father Head Wound, I did not think I would get to even finish it at all. I used to be able to handle gore when I was younger, but I’ve grown weak in my old age and I just can’t do it anymore. It’s too much for me and I’d rather watch horror where the fear is more psychological. I know it’s almost two decades (!!!!) now but one horror movie I really liked is Let The Right One In. I felt the gore in that one was understated and just the right amount.

Another one that I really loved was Suspiria, although I have not watch the Dario Argento one and just the Luca Guadagnino one. That was also very unsettling and, just like Let The Right One In, knew when to show its cards, so to speak.

So anyway, I was fully expecting this movie to just be a gore-fest, but I was pleasantly surprised that it leaned much more heavily on building tension throughout rather than pelting me with jump scares. This made the moments where gore did happen — that birth scene in particular — really unsettling and also kept me watching.

The story is pretty resonant for the times as well, given that the lead is a woman who spends practically the entire movie without any agency. She is pushed and pulled by entities beyond her control and there’s very little she can do during most of the movie to assert herself. Whan she finally has a chance to do so, the necessity of having it connect to the original film robs her of that as well.

This connection is actually what made the movie less effective to me compared to something like Suspiria, which is also about a woman — women — who have been robbed of their agency. But in Suspiria, the people who have taken the agency of those women get their comeuppance and that really didn’t happen here in The First Omen. We get a hint of it in the ending, but if it wasn’t connected to the original film I feel like the female lead could have done something at the climactic moment that would have been more impactful, resonant, and empowering for viewers to see, especially female viewers.

But then again, are horror movies meant to empower in the first place? This is why I can’t really say that the film wasn’t good. It just wasn’t the kind of horror that I prefer.