“To have Disney support our team to get a vagina to screen, that’s a dream,” said the director, who also opened up about the early audience reaction to some of the horror flick’s most shocking moments.
Disney and explicit nudity don’t normally come hand in hand, but The First Omen isn’t exactly your typical movie from the Mouse House.
While the upcoming horror movie is being distributed by 20th Century Studios, they were picked up by Walt Disney from Fox back in 2019. The new feature is the first installment in the series to be released at its new home; it’s also the first prequel, following the original, three sequels and a remake.
And this movie hits hard.
But while there are some shocking moments of graphic violence in the film, it’s a scene involving a shot of a female body part that nearly landed the movie an NC-17 rating, according to director Arkasha Stevenson. After detailing her “long battle” with the MPAA to get an R-rating with Fangoria, TooFab spoke with Stevenson following the movie’s premiere — the first time she saw it with an audience.
“That’s probably the one of the more rewarding experiences of my entire life, getting that image to screen,” she shared.
While we don’t want to give too much away, the extremely tense scene in question involves a shot of a vagina, taken from straight-on, during labor.
“That image was, it encapsulates the themes of our film, which is the female body being violated, from inside out, mind, body and soul,” said Stevenson. “To have Disney support our team to get a vagina to screen, that’s a dream. It’s amazing.”
Noting she was raised on Georgia O’Keeffe paintings, Stevenson said she was “thrilled” to get the shot into the movie, noting it was something she really hasn’t seen on the big screen before. “I’m really pumped,” she added.
Stevenson was equally excited to see some of the audible reactions to the gore in the film.
“It’s so wonderful to see people react and to see people react not just to some of the set pieces and the jump scares, but to see people reacting to [lead character] Margaret,” she said, again calling it “rewarding.” Stevenson also said the impact is “really speaks to [star] Nell TIger Free’s performance, because I think people felt very connected to her in in the screenings that we’ve been in.”
“She’s quite literally a tiger,” added the director.
Seeing as this is the sixth film in The Omen franchise, Stevenson admitted she and her creative partner and cowriter, Tim Smith, approached the idea of another film “skeptically” at first. She explained the two came into the project as big fans of the series already and only wanted to do another film if they were “bringing something interesting to say” to the franchise.
“I really felt like the script was … by having this young female lead in a predominantly masculine franchise was a really interesting new approach,” she continued. “And then the way that it dovetailed into the 1976 Omen, I thought, was really clever and elegant.”
“What were the films around that era trying to say? And how do we answer back to that and have a conversation with it?” she added of the approach. “So, I think something that Tim and I talked a lot about was all these films we love like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen, people are very obviously terrified of their children and what’s happening in that era?”
“You have this counterculture revolution, where people are starting to reject authority and tradition and this older generation, and the older generation was probably terrified of these young people,” said Stevenson. “And now it’s, I think, a little bit the opposite, young people are terrified of our parents’ generation. And so that is kind of how we wanted to engage.”
The First Omen hits theaters April 6.
