Written by Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson and Keith Thomas
Directed by Arkasha Stevenson
Starring Nell Tiger Free, Tawfeek Barhom, Sônia Braga, Ralph Ineson and Billy Nighy
USA, 2024
Perhaps it was not a great idea to watch THE FIRST OMEN and APARTMENT 7A in the same day. One’s about how the Catholic church wants to breed a woman in order to give birth to the antichrist and the other’s about a bunch of devil worshippers who want to do pretty much the same. Of course, the Catholic church is doing it because they think not enough people believe in God anymore so what better way to convince them than to bring about the antichrist, and the devil worshippers are just doing it because they love Satan. But still.
As evidenced by my Horrorfest 2010 review, I’ve never been a big fan of THE OMEN, and perhaps part of the reason is because I don’t buy this plot. I guess in real life there are plots all the time that don’t make any sense, but they don’t make for great fiction. Like, how convoluted can you get – not enough people believe in God therefore you want to bring about the antichrist to convince them? It doesn’t follow. I spent the whole movie distracted by how the plot doesn’t make sense to me.
Whatever. The point is, there’s this nun (Nell Tiger Free) who’s shipped from America to Italy to watch over this orphanage and she starts to think a disturbed girl there (Nicole Sorace) is in some way being mistreated and she begins to unravel this conspiracy. She wants to rescue this girl, but the whole time I was driven to distraction what exactly she’s going to do with someone presumably carrying the antichrist… rescue her from the conspiracy and then… kill her? Thus, not rescuing her? Rescue her from the conspiracy and then let her have her antichrist and then… kill it? I was never clear on what they planned to do to stop this conspiracy. Maybe they weren’t sure either. I mean, it’s the antichrist, the Bible itself, written by God himself, says the antichrist’s coming. Good luck stopping It.
Incidentally, in a bigger picture sense, this movie and APARTMENT 7A also had me driven to distraction wondering what these all-powerful supernatural beings even need with humans in the first place. Like, you can do magic, why do you need a human woman to have a human baby for you? Like, what’s the deal there? It’s just funny to think about these magical beings needing to meddle in human affairs in order to get anthing done. Like, they’re relying on all these priests and nuns and nosey elderly couples in apartment buildings to do stuff for them? Why?
Anyway, is it any good? I dunno. This is the kind of movie where there’s two plot-device “surprise” car crashes and both of them are telegraphed in advance. You tell me.
No comments:
Post a Comment