Two movies came out this week, and I enjoyed one much more than the other, Monkey Man over The First Omen, but despite my love for Monkey Man and Dev Patel, I am going to embark on more wonderful journey about a movie about the birth of the Anti-Christ, a gruesome allegory about abortion. In a previous paper, I talked about how nuns have come to play a prominent role in horror, and obviously nuns are associated with religion, so I think that there is also something else going on within these films, other than the fact that a nun can look terrifying, and that old churches, although beautiful, can also look creepy at night.
The First Omen is a prequel to a horror movie series that started in 1976, and it has sequels and remakes, but this goes back to before the original. A young woman, Margaret, arrives to Italy from America, and she is soon to finish the process of becoming a nun. The convent she is at, is a hospital and an orphanage, and it is specifically a hospital for women who are about to give birth. There is one orphan girl, Carlita, that Margaret takes a liking to, and Margaret sticks up for Carlita, when the nuns treat Carlita poorly and lock her in a solitary room. It seems like this might not be the best decision, but as the story progresses, we find out that it is not Carlita we need to worry about, but Margret herself. She becomes pregnant, and it turns out, that she was impregnated by a beast, so her baby is going to be the Anti-Christ.
The biggest issue I have with this movie is that it is almost the exact same as Immaculate, which came out two weeks ago. In Immaculate, Sydney Sweeny gets impregnated by the church in a way that makes her the new Virgin Mary, so no sex was involved, and she is going to give birth to the new Jesus, and in this movie, the main character also gets impregnated by the church, but to give birth to the Anti-Christ. Both violent movies about nuns giving birth to babies that are not theirs, and that they do not want, but the church is forcing them to have. The biggest difference is that Immaculate tells the story in 90 minutes and kills the baby, but First Omen tells the story in 120 minutes and the baby lives thus the multi-movie franchise, so despite most other people saying First Omen is better, I am all in with Immaculate.
Both stories also work as bloody allegories for abortion. There is a large amount of violence in the final acts of these movies, and it is because both Sweeny’s character and Free’s character are fighting for the right to have a say over their bodies, but the church says that they have control. Much like abortion, the church is prolife, and they assert their control, and these particular cases, the church is the one responsible for the pregnancy, but the allegory is easily transferable to any time a woman gets pregnant, especially when it was forced, and does not want the baby, but feels the societal pressures to not get an abortion.
To me, there is something more than just antiabortion rhetoric going on in these movies, and other religious horrors. A few weeks ago, one of the podcasts I listen to about college football, The Shutdown Fullcast, had a special episode, because one of the hosts had written a book, Hell Is a World Without You. In this book, he takes his own personal story about growing up in a Christian Church, and how it affected him, and it is not necessarily positive, and during this episode of the podcast, he shares stories that many others shared with him about wild occurrences that people had experienced while at church, so that the church could teach them a “lesson.” The one that stuck with me the most was a person sharing a story about how the church sent in a fake active shooter, to show the adolescents that their lives could end at any time, so it is important to keep their faith now.
Catholic guilt is a recurring theme in many of the reviews in Letterboxd as well for these films. So besides the strong theme of abortion and having control over one’s body, negative experiences in the church also seem to cloud these movies. At a young impressionable age, many people are indoctrinated in these ideas that if they engage in certain activities they should feel guilt, and this follows them for the rest of their lives, even if they stop believing in the church. As people share their stories, it makes it easier for others to share their weird experiences in church. Also the church has lost a considerable amount of power, and this had led to people sharing their stories with more honesty without having to worry about retribution. Clearly there have been more problems with churches other than their pro-life stance, so that is part of the reason why I think more of these stories have come out.
So I have decided to share the one wild church experience I had. My first summer in college, I did something called Summer Beach Project. Summer Beach Project was done through a college ministry at my school called Campus Life, and each summer they would go down to Panama City Beach, give students a cheap minimum wage job, and in the evenings, they would teach us about Christianity and how to spread it. It was a fine enough time, and personally, I enjoyed talking to people I worked with about what they believed more than I did about sharing my own personal beliefs. I worked at Five Guys with people also on an exchange program mostly. Some came from Thailand and others came from China, and they had some interesting beliefs. There were also a few Panama City residents who worked there as well.
During Summer Beach Project, we would have one on ones, which were conversations with people who had been a part of Campus Life for longer periods of time, so they were trying to train the youngers to replace them in a year or two. They did this through “intentional conversations” at fast food restaurants. I still hate the words “intentional conversations” to this day from this summer due to its vast overuse and oddly negative connotation.
So on one of my one on ones at a random diner along the Panama City strip, a higher up asked me, “On a scale from one to ten, how sure are you that you are going to heaven?” I sat there and pondered it with a hearty hmmm. Then I gave what I felt was an adequate answer of seven. I had been strong in my faith. At that point I was going to church every Sunday, I had a daily devotional that I read every morning, and I even went to church on a weekday. I prayed regularly, so I felt about as pious as I could. I still made mistakes, but everyone does. So seven, a slightly above average Christian. Also one of the tenets in Christianity is to not be boastful. It is important to be humble, but apparently, I was oh so wrong.
My answer of seven received the response that I was “going to Hell.” There was a right answer to this question, and the answer was ten. Due to Jesus dying for my sins, I should have felt that I was assured a place in heaven. This was delivered in an awkward and abrasive way from someone who already was not my favorite person, but he was someone, who was seriously venerated by those in the Beach Project community, but instead of lighting a fire beneath me, no pun intended, it really turned me off from the whole thing. He clearly did not know who he was talking to, and he did not know how to help me grow, and since then my relationship with church has really been up and down, and it all goes back to this.
So it was funny that on the way to The First Omen, some guy in the mall got my attention, and I took my headphone out to talk to him, because I thought he had a question about the mall, but it turns out he had multiple questions for me, and he asked if I had time to take a quick survey. I did not have much time because the movie was starting soon, but I said yes anyways.
The first question he asked was if I was spiritual, which I answered yes, and then he asked me what I believed, so I said Christianity. He asked on a scale from one to ten how good my relationship with God is, to which I said five, which is probably an overestimation, but he said that was higher than most people said, but after my previous experience with a one to ten rating, I thought for sure this guy was going to tell me I was going to Hell and needed to be saved, but he was nice and invited me to church on Syracuse’s campus, but I told him I was fine, and that I am almost never on campus. Once I found out what was happening, I thought about telling him that I had to run, because my movie about the Anti-Christ was about to start, but I did not do that, although it would have given him a fun story to tell.
The First Omen also drew some comparisons to Possession, due to one specific scene. Possession is a French/German horror movie that came out in 1981, and it centers around a girl, who obviously has some things going on that are affecting her mentally, and the most famous scene from this movie, is when she is walking through a subway station, and she starts to have an episode, and it is an incredibly physical performance, and in the new Omen, Margaret’s character goes through something similar, but instead of being scared or off put by the one in Omen, I chuckled, but the one in Possession had me hooked, so yet another comparison I disagree with others with, but Possession did get banned in the U.S for being “disturbing,” and First Omen did almost get an NC-17 rating, which is kind of like a modern day ban.
It almost got the NC-17 rating, because of one specific scene. Margret hears a scream in the hospital, and she rushes in to see if anyone needs help. She sees it is a woman giving birth, and right when she gets there, the doctors close the door. There are operating windows to look through, so Margret watches on in horror. The shots shift from the pregnant women in pain to Margret staring on in horror, and it culminates with a gross witch like hand with long bony fingers breaching through the lady’s vagina, and then Margret faints. It was funny because both the guy next to me and I both went hmm at the same time, and the lady behind me said, “What the fuck!?” Cinema magic for sure.
At the end of the day, The First Omen probably got ruined for me by Immaculate. They are so similar, and they both cross similar lines, but for some reason the lines that Omen crossed did not get to me as much as Immaculate. If you have a love for the franchise, you will probably enjoy it more than I did. After watching the new one, I did go back and watch the original, and it was decent, especially at the beginning, but by the time both get to the end, I was just ready for it to be done. 2.5 Stars.
Also I would like to say that Summer Beach Project and Campus Outreach is not all like that. One of my best friends from college was also on Beach Project, and it is one of the reasons that we got as close as we did, so I am grateful for my time there, but that one scar does still sting.
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