So, about two weeks before watching this movie…I watched Immaculate. And the friend I saw this film with turned round to me and said, ‘It feels like I just watched Immaculate again!’ and…I had to agree with that.

I saw something that mentioned this movie would be the scariest horror movie of 2024, but I have to say that I didn’t see that. During the initial opening scene, I did think this movie would have been better visually in 3D. There was a shot of falling glass in slow motion that looked like it was made purely for a 3D movie.

I did find it quite hard to connect with Margaret as a character in this movie. She didn’t really seem to want to be in Rome, but even though she looked like she didn’t really want to be there (based on her expressions after meeting Cardinal Lawrence), I couldn’t really figure out what she did want to do. There were hints that she’d had a bad childhood, which didn’t make much sense with what was revealed later, but I felt like she only had that to give her a reason to connect to Carlita.

Speaking of Carlita, I found her to be an interesting character, but I felt that her original appearance was at odds with how she acted later on. I thought she wasn’t able to speak when she initially appeared, but later on, she came across as less of the wild child it seemed the movie was going for. Having said that, I did like the interactions between Margaret and Carlita and the friendship that formed between them.

I mentioned that this movie was advertised as being the scariest movie of the year, but the elements of horror were really quite disappointing. Once again, there was a lack of subtlety or an understanding of ‘less is more’ that seems to be so prevalent in the current horror movies.

I guess this movie works as a good tie-in for the original Omen series. I haven’t actually seen any of the Omen movies, but I’m aware enough of them to connect the dots. However, the problem with making a prequel that is obviously left open for a second movie is that, inevitably, it’s either going to completely contradict the original movie(s), or can really end in one way, so a lot of the tension of not knowing what’s going to happen is removed. After all, there was no mystery in how the Star Wars prequel trilogy was going to end, or who the main bad guy was going to be.

On the whole, this movie was fairly typical for modern day horror movies. Another disappointment, really. I’m still searching for the good horror movies.