10 Recent Horror Movies That Didn't Deserve To Bomb
5. The First Omen
Though expectations weren't exactly high for The First Omen pre-release, The Omen franchise's brand recognition and general success of even terrible religious-themed horror flicks seemingly teed this one up for easy success.
The bitter irony, then, is that while The First Omen received decidedly more glowing reviews than just about anyone could've expected for a prequel nobody asked for, audiences en masse just didn't turn up for it. Even with a relatively modest $30 million budget for a glossy studio horror, The First Omen wrapped up its run with just $54 million worldwide - a woefully disappointing result that left it falling short of profitability theatrically.
You can point to a few issues here. For one, it released just two weeks after the similarly premised Sydney Sweeney-starring Immaculate, and as iconic as The Omen is to a generation of horror fans, it simply isn't recognisable to younger genre enthusiasts. After all, the last mainline entry - excluding 2006's remake of The Omen - was 1991's critically panned TV movie Omen IV: The Awakening.
Even so, The First Omen actually suggested the franchise had some artistic life left in it, yet per its commercial underperformance a follow-up seems improbable.