Evil is unleashed in the first trailer for The First Omen, a prequel to 1976’s classic horror film The Omen.
It’s always hard to scare people with just a trailer, isn’t it? You need to communicate a sense of terror or include a couple of jump scares to get people interested in booking tickets, but I have to be honest here. The First Omen takes the cake with how it chooses to sell the film to its potential audience.
People walking backwards. That’s it. People are ominously moving backwards in the first trailer for Arkasha Stevenson’s prequel to 1976’s classic horror The Omen.
Take a look at the trailer below.
The trailer is heavy with religious imagery, a lot of nuns and priests, so if that’s your thing, it looks like The First Omen will more than deliver.
There’s something superbly unnerving about the film’s tagline, “To control those who don’t believe, create something to fear”. We can only assume that means Damien, the demon child, but who knows. Perhaps there’s an even bigger evil at play here.
Nell Tiger Free plays the lead role in The First Omen and is joined by Bill Nighy, Tawfeek Barhom, Sônia Braga and Ralph Ineson (who also walks backwards in the trailer). Stevenson is making her feature directorial debut here and she has also written the script with Tim Smith and Keith Thomas, based on a story by Ben Jacoby.
Richard Donner’s 1976 original film is a disturbing piece of religious horror cinema and while the franchise has struggled far more than Friday The 13th, Halloween and Saw combined, it remains a stone cold classic.
This is the very first prequel in The Omen franchise, which consists of four original films, a 2006 reboot starring Julia Stiles and a short lived TV series titled Damien, which followed the adult adventures of the literal Antichrist.
Here’s the official synopsis: “When a young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, she encounters a darkness that causes her to question her own faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate.”
The First Omen is in cinemas 5th April.
