The First Omen

The film centers around Sister Margaret, played by Lily Collins, who becomes the unwitting vessel for the Antichrist's birth. As she navigates the complex world of convent life, she catches the eye of a charismatic and mysterious priest, Father Thames, played by Bill Nighy. Unbeknownst to Margaret, Thames is secretly working to bring about the birth of the Antichrist, and she becomes a crucial pawn in his dark plans.

At its core, The First Omen is a film about the violent collision between female agency and patriarchal control. The protagonist, Margaret (a revelatory Nell Tiger Free), is a young American novitiating in a crumbling Rome. Unlike the passive, hysterical women of 1970s horror, Margaret is curious, skeptical, and deeply empathetic. Her crisis of faith is not merely spiritual but physical. As she uncovers the conspiracy within the Church to breed the antichrist—selecting her as the unwitting surrogate through rape and demonic insemination—the film maps a terrifying allegory of reproductive coercion. The narrative weaponizes the iconography of the convent: the nuns are not pious servants but silent overseers of a eugenic program, and the confessional becomes a site of medical violation. Stevenson explicitly links the demonic to the gynecological, suggesting that for the patriarchal institution, a woman’s womb is either a sanctuary to be controlled or a battlefield to be colonized. The First Omen

You do not have to, but you will appreciate the prequel much more if you have seen the original. The ending of The First Omen spoils the twist of the 1976 film. The film centers around Sister Margaret, played by