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Horror

Do You Hear His Voice?

Do You Hear His Voice?

On End Times Fascism, Godaganda, and The First Omen

This is part of a series of essays about my favourite horror sequels. Read the introduction here, and the full archive here. Subscribe for free to have it delivered to your inbox every other day in October. If you're enjoying it, you can show your appreciation by buying me a coffee or sharing it with friends.

Spoilers: I try my best not to spoil the films I discuss, but if spoilers ruin your viewing experience, it might be safer to watch the films before reading.

The First Omen (2024) Dir. Arkasha Stevenson

Plot Summary: Margaret, an American noviciate, arrives in Rome to work in an Italian orphanage, but not all is at it seems.

"I think one of the philosophies that this film comes from is that the Devil isn’t really scary. The Devil is really just a tool, and it’s man who really, really conjures evil. And so, you could remove the supernatural element from this movie, and I think it would still be a horror film." - Arkasha Stevenson

The lives of Ed and Lorraine Warren, two self-professed paranormal investigators (Ed a self-taught demonologist, and Lorraine a clairvoyant and medium), have been good to Hollywood. Their early investigation into the paranormal experiences of the Lutz family led to a book - The Amityville Horror - which in turn led to about 10 studio films and more than 60 low-budget, direct-to-video independent films. But the real payload has been in The Conjuring series which has, to date, spawned four Conjurings, three Annabelles, and two Nuns. The franchise has earned distributor Warner Bros. a combined $2.7 billion. A fifth Conjuring is already on the way.

I really struggled not to cover most of that last paragraph in quotation marks. Because obviously Ed was not a demonologist. Nor was Lorraine a medium. They were both frauds and grifters who preyed on people's grief and trauma. I love horror stories but ghosts and demons are not real. What's real is that most of the Warrens' claims have been debunked. What's real is that Ed was credibly accused of grooming and having a sexual relationship with a 15 year old - Judith Penney - when he was in his mid-30s. Penney claimed she was moved into the Warrens' home, where she lived for the next 40 years. She claimed she witnessed physical abuse from Ed towards Lorraine and that the pair coerced Penney into getting an abortion. All of these accusations are horrific enough, but when you start to delve into the deleterious impacts their "investigations" actually had on the families and people they were supposedly helping, it all adds up to a distinctly monstrous portrait of the real Warrens.

"The Warrens' real god is money." - Judith Penney

I bring all this up partly to make a case that the Conjuring franchise is deeply cursed and should be avoided at all costs, but also to flag the pernicious and hypocritical nature of Godaganda films. The Conjuring positions the Warrens as pious, God-fearing ghostbusters. Soldiers of Good, at war with the demonic forces of Evil. God is good, and so are the Warrens. The producers could easily create some original religious horror of their own and stop trading off the name of the Warrens, but they know the suggestive power of a "based on true events" title card. They are happy to feed the legend of the Warrens, and their estate, no matter what kind of evil scumbags they really were. Allegedly.

We're currently in a period of what Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor describe as End Times Fascism. Where the billionaires, oligarchs and politicians in power not only believe in a biblical apocalypse but are actively trying to accelerate it:

"Armageddon. The idea comes from the Bible, the book of Revelation, which the religious right takes very literally. Especially in the United States, but increasingly across Latin America, where they believe that we are in the literal end of days, and it is their duty to accelerate prophecy.

And so what does the prophecy say? It says at the end of the world, there will be floods, there will be pestilence, there'll be plagues, there will be fires and floods, there will be war in the Holy Land, and then the Messiah will return. And so everything that most of us think are awful things, right? They see as felicitous signs, and they want to accelerate them.

Within this theology, those are all signs. They were all foretold. And there’s a kind of excitement and an accelerationism." - Astra Taylor

Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, chairman of Palantir, and orthodox Christian, believes that the antichrist is already among us. The harbinger according to him? Environmentalism. He's suggested that Greta Thunberg might be the antichrist.

Normal man. Normal, super cool man that has his hands on our medical data.

The theocrats in power are actively trying to accelerate the apocalypse in the hopes of satisfying the prophecies of arcane passages in the bible. With the idea, one assumes, that they will be chosen few who are raptured? At that point - when one is destroying the planet to hasten the end times - has not worship of God, in effect, become worship of the Devil?

"We quote pastor John Hagee, who’s a very popular leader of a megachurch in Texas, and he’s just like: Everyone! All my thousands of followers! Call the White House and tell them that you’re so grateful for the war in Iran because that means that the end is nigh, and that means we’re that much closer to being hoovered up in a magic escalator to heaven." - Astra Taylor

The Omen films play heavily in the sandpit of this interpretation of the book of Revelation. The first film is an entertaining piece of Godaganda that apparently saw Pauline Kael's review of The Exorcist, where she described it as "the biggest recruiting poster the Catholic Church has had," and said in response: "hold my body of Christ."

The film is ultimately pretty silly, but director Richard Donner (of Superman, Goonies, Scrooged and Lethal Weapon fame) grounds it in a believable, matter-of-fact reality. Donner is such a solid, "steady hand at the wheel" director. He works well with actors, has an excellent sense of narratively effective structure, and always knows where to put the camera. He made the choice to construct the film so it can be viewed ambiguously as to whether Damien was indeed the antichrist. Even if you think that's not even a question, you can read the film in a way that suggests Damien didn't commit any acts with ill intent. That there's a force or people around him carrying these acts out, and he's none the wiser. It's an approach the later sequels forget.

The film slotted in well with the rise of supernatural pedophobia pictures like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby where 1970s society was starting to become extremely terrified of their youth. But it also eschewed those film's female perspectives for a very male-centric one. Gregory Peck is our principal protagonist in Omen and he goes about gaslighting his wife Katherine for the entire duration of the film. To begin, he lies and tells her that an adopted child is in fact her child, and then proceeds to let her assume she's mentally unwell when she starts to suspect Damien isn't hers. He's then warned that Katherine will be targeted by Damien if she's pregnant. When she tells him she wants to get an abortion, he refuses because he's desperate to prove the prophecy wrong. He not only refuses her bodily autonomy, he condemns her to death. And he's basically the hero? Ladies and gentlemen: the 1970s.

Evil child horror didn't start with The Omen (arguably, The Bad Seed has that honour), but it's success definitely paved the way for more. With Children of the Corn, The Village of the Damned (based on a personal favourite - The Midwich Cuckoos) and Pet Semetary popping up in the ensuing decade. More recent examples like Orphan, Hereditary and Brightburn show the sub-genre is still alive and well.

Children do be creepy.

You can also see the extremely fun, fate-based, "accidental" deaths in The Omen having an influence on the Final Destination films. That influence being most clearly apparent in Final Destination 3 where they even use photography as a way to predict deaths. But that influence also extends to the way that both film series have this sense of doomed inevitability to them. Neither series have much faith in self-determination.

For all it's faults, I have a real soft spot the The Omen. It's such a solid, if deeply silly film. It has an even more ridiculous sequel which remains fun, but the third fully tilts into Christian Premillennialism. Maybe more unforgivable: it wastes Sam Neill by giving him very little to chew on (he does his best.)

The trilogy was followed up with a swiftly abandoned attempt to continue the franchise (the direct-to-TV Omen IV: The Awakening), and an entirely pointless shot-for-shot remake of the first film in 2006 which is credited as having the same script as the 1976 original.

Thus, The Omen lay dormant for 18 years. Until 2024 and Arkasha Stevenson's The First Omen.

Let's [Charles] Dance!
"The miracle of life can be a messy business." - Cardinal Lawrence

The First Omen takes the male-led, supernatural pedophobia and Godaganda of the original film and reshapes it into a body horror about women's bodily autonomy, enforced pregnancy, and institutional rape. It completely refreshes a tired franchise and does so while staying respectful to the original.

Director and co-writer Akasha Stevenson started out as a photojournalist for the LA Times before deciding to pivot to filmmaking. She started directing a few episodes of TV (for Channel Zero, Legion, and Brand New Cherry Flavour among others) before she landed her debut directorial opportunity.

It's such an impressive, confident debut too. The First Omen looks gorgeous, with Stevenson displaying a real knack, in particular, for composition. Everything feels intentional, with subliminal [hell]mouths framing particular shots, or small details like Margaret's hair creating spider-like patterns on the bed. There's a real sense of threat and unease encroaching on every shot, emphasised by the way the colours slowly get more hellish - boiling us alive like lobsters, like Margaret. I've rarely been more excited to see what a director does next than after seeing The First Omen. Everyone has been talking about Curry Barker and Ken Parsons this year, but for me, the next project from Akasha Stevenson is the one to watch.

[It is currently called "Untitled A24 Horror Film" on IMDB, stars Hunter Schafer and Emma Corrin, and is apparently about a bachelor party that spirals into terror. Also, vampires? Schafer has already said it's her favourite thing she's ever filmed. Count. Me. In.]

Stevenson had to fight to get her vision on screen without the dreaded, box-office-killing NC-17 rating. There's a scene in which a demonic Jackal hand is birthed and the ratings board were displeased. But Stevenson and her team pushed back.

"At the end of the day, this film is about female body autonomy and about forced reproduction and rape. You can’t make a movie about that without showing the imagery and showing it in a non-sexualised light. That’s why we were so willing to go to battle with the ratings board." - Arkasha Stevenson

In the end, the cut that was made was a shot of the vagina minus the demon hand. Apparently female anatomy is far more scandalous than demonic body parts. Including a demon penis:

“We have a lot of gore, we have a lot of violence. We have a demon phallus, like a close-up of the demon phallus. But it was just this one shot, the shot of the vagina that was getting flagged every single time.” - Arkasha Stevenson

Stevenson does a lot with disorientating in-camera (or at least, in-shot) scene transitions that completely unsettle the viewer's sense of time and place. Putting us in the frame of mind of Margaret, who has been groomed not to trust her own senses or instincts. Nell Tiger Free's performance of Margaret is superb (no surprise to anyone who has watched M. Night Shyamalan's Servant.) The centrepiece perhaps being the scene in which Margaret starts to give birth. A nod to Isabelle Adjani's deeply astonishing and disturbing subway miscarriage in Possession. I also think the opening scene of the film is a little tip of the hat to Don't Look Now. If you're going to reference a couple of '70s horrors, you may as well as reference the very best.

"What do you think the church is most frightened of?" - Father Brennan

"The Devil?" - Margaret

"Secularism." - Father Brennan

Stevenson has noted that she flew to Italy to start filming The First Omen on the day Row v. Wade was overturned. Depressingly apt given the film is about men controlling women's bodies and forced reproduction. But interestingly, the film also makes more clear what has always been at the heart of The Omen franchise: Theocratic fascism. The Church, terrified of losing it's grip on society, resorting to rape and Devil worship in order to cling onto power and relevancy. Scared men, hastening the end times for their own gain. Evangelical Christian accelerationists like the ones in the US who overturned Roe v. Wade.

It's a film that's aware of the revelations of sexual assault in the Church and their cover-ups, aware of the wider context of end times fascism, and aware that an Omen film in the 2020s has to reckon with these things. The First Omen is decidedly not a recruiting poster for the Catholic Church.

There are maybe five minutes of the film that has to do the obligatory franchise tie-in silliness, but the rest is, to my mind, pretty unimpeachable. If you avoided it at the time due to having no interest in a legacy horror film, or you'd already seen Immaculate (also great) and had had enough nunsploitation for one year, I'd give The First Omen a try.

Whisper it, but I think it might be the best Omen film?

"Don't you hear His voice?" - Cardinal Lawrence

"No. I only hear my own." - Margaret
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