Mood can't carry 'Omen' prequel

 

  I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that Omen enthusiasts populate the MovieVerse, fans who enjoy repeated visits to the chilly hunk of 1976 horror that spawned several additional helpings.

  Still, fan service alone can't explain The First Omen, a moody but muddled prequel to the original, which acquired some of its cache from the presence of Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. 

 Arkasha Stevenson makes her directorial debut with a single task: To explain how the Antichrist Damien arrived in the world before being adopted by Peck's character, who secretly substituted the infant for the baby Remick's character lost during childbirth.

  In this edition, Nell Tiger Free stars as Margaret, a novitiate who arrives in Rome in 1971 to "take the veil." She's welcomed by Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy), a high-ranking churchman who believes Margaret has a special destiny. 

  Nuns in movies always seem to require stern superiors. In this instance, Sonia Braga lands the job. Braga portrays Sister Silva, head of the creepy orphanage where much of the story unfolds.

  Early on, Margaret meets another novitiate (Maria Caballero), an aspiring nun who's intent on sowing some wild oats before taking her vows. 

  Agreeing to join her for an evening of clubbing, Margaret dons a sexy outfit that had me wondering whether First Omen might be ready for a touch of satire.

   Forget that. The movie seldom lets us forget that evil lurks, even it takes its time making an entrance.

  At the orphanage, a sympathetic Margaret becomes fascinated with Carlita (Nicole Sorace), an orphan who's regarded as a troublemaker. Carlita insists that she's seeing terrible visions. 

   About midway through, Margaret is sought out by Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson), an excommunicated priest who warns Margaret about a secret cabal that has hatched a cockeyed plan for restoring the primacy of a church that's losing its power. 

   I can't say more without introducing spoilers but the more you think about The First Omen, the more preposterous it may appear to be.

  That's not to say that Stevenson doesn't have chops: She infuses the movie with dread -- and Mark Korven's suggestively ominous score adds flavor. Free's portrayal of Margaret's climactic aria of trembling, moaning, and quaking possession provides another highlight.

  First Omen offers some grisly sights, a fiery suicide and an auto crash that severs a body in two, among them. A few of the jump scares deliver the right jolts.

   The story, which can confound as much as it clarifies, heads toward a finale built around a weird birth ritual that goes heavy on blood, slime, and gore, which could be the name of a band if punk rock ever makes a comeback.

   I wish I could have taken The First Omen as seriously as it takes itself, but, for me, the movie seemed to carry on a heavy flirtation with horror hooey that even its rich atmospherics couldn't always mask.

   

   

     

Life on Mars is no day at the beach

 

    Few movies are as focused as Settlers and, in the case of this story about stranded Martian colonizers, that focus can be cruel and unremitting. 

    Settlers has little or no interest in the technology of survival -- a biosphere enables its inhabitants to breathe -- or in the earthly breakdown that brought colonists to Mars in the first place. 

    The movie's interests center almost entirely on what people will do to survive.

   Minimally populated and sparse, Settlers raises questions about whether the characters we see are the only residents of this desolate world. Might there be other, unseen colonists on the fabled Red Planet?

   Filming in a South African desert, director Wyatt Rockefeller turns Mars into a planetary frontier resembling an isolated outpost in the mythic Old West. 

     The story begins by introducing us to Ilsa (Sofia Boutella), Reza (Jonny Lee Miller), and their young daughter Remmy (Brooklynn Prince).  

    For this trio, life has a bereft quality that's mirrored in the unforgiving Martian landscape. 

    One day, the trio -- sole occupants of the movie's biosphere-- sees the word "leave" scrawled on the transparent shield that separates them from the lethal Martian atmosphere. 

    A group of invaders wants to appropriate what might be the planet's last habitable space. They wear oxygen masks and are armed. A small battle ensues and a new character -- Ismael Cruz Cordova's Jerry -- enters the mix. 

    No fair telling exactly how but the power dynamics inside the biosphere shift as the story poses questions about how much the characters can accommodate themselves to the new reality of other people and the conflicts they breed.

     The only other creatures in the movie are a pig that Remmy treats as a pet, some chickens, and -- if you want to stretch the point -- a robot named Steve, a boxy machine with stem-like legs. Steve screams of low-tech inefficiencies but has just enough personality to prompt empathy.

     The actors are up to the task with Prince (familiar from The Florida Project) giving the film its anchor. As time passes,  Nell Tiger Free takes over the role of Remmy and Rockefeller moves toward the film's uncompromising conclusion.

   Settlers  doesn't entirely hold up when you begin thinking about its backstory, the groundwork that paves the way for Rockefeller's drama. Moreover, the movie  requires patience, particularly at times when the story loses its drive.

    But Rockefeller effectively abandons us in a forbidding environment with characters who are forced to confront themselves and make choices that spring from unalterable necessities. 

    As a result, we're left to wonder whether these characters aren't playing a terrible end game.