The First Omen is technically a prequel to Richard Donner’s 1976 classic The Omen, but its demonic pregnancy storyline is much closer to a different horror movie masterpiece. Set in 1971, The First Omen revolves around an American novitiate named Margaret Daino, who’s sent to work at an orphanage in Rome and ends up uncovering a sinister religious conspiracy. As it turns out, she’s the offspring of a jackal demon and she’s been earmarked by a cult to become the mother of the Antichrist.

It’s been praised as one of the best entries in The Omen franchise, and it has plenty of references to the original film’s most iconic moments. It has a nod to the church spire impaling, a nod to the car crash beheading, and the ending teases the arrival of Damien. But The First Omen’s themes and narrative are more in line with a different horror classic than the one it’s an official prequel to.

The First Omen Is More Like Rosemary’s Baby Than The Omen

The story of a woman being coerced into carrying the Antichrist is similar to Rosemary’s Baby

Margaret’s journey throughout The First Omen – being used as a birthing vessel for the Antichrist by a sadistic religious cult – is the same journey that Rosemary Woodhouse goes through in the 1968 horror classic Rosemary’s Baby. With a forced impregnation by a demon and a disturbing climactic birth scene that brings the Antichrist to Earth, The First Omen plays more like a reboot of Rosemary’s Baby than The Omen. The Omen is about the fears of raising a child, but Rosemary’s Baby and The First Omen are about the fears of giving birth.

Director Arkasha Stevenson uses the Satanic storyline of The First Omen to explore the issue of female bodily autonomy and the systemic control of women’s bodies. This is the same theme explored by Rosemary’s Baby’s own demonic pregnancy storyline. It’s the perfect cinematic metaphor for the horrors of women being deprived of bodily agency. Even the ending of The First Omen, in which Margaret can’t bring herself to kill her son (even though he’s the embodiment of evil), is borrowed from Rosemary’s Baby.

1 First Omen Scene Is Lifted Directly From Rosemary’s Baby

The forced impregnation scene is practically a shot-for-shot remake of Rosemary’s Baby

One of the scariest moments in The First Omen is lifted directly from Rosemary’s Baby. When the church’s conspirators capture Margaret, they drag her into a dark chamber, where she’s forcibly impregnated by the jackal demon. With impressionistic cinematography and ambiguous editing, this sequence is near-identical to the forced demonic impregnation scene from Rosemary’s Baby. That scene from Rosemary’s Baby is one of the most iconic and unforgettable sequences in the history of horror cinema, so it’s unsurprising that The First Omen used it as a source of inspiration.