Rome, 1971. Two scantily clad nuns (?) head to their local disco to dance to music that wouldn’t be released for another few years; the first omen that this prequel to 1976’s The Omen might be a few nuns short of a cloister.

The latest nun-themed horror flick (a genre so popular it’s spawned its owned Russell Crowe-helmed sub-genre) sees yet another American nun head to Italy to take the veil. She is met by a kindly Cardinal (Bill Nighy) who explains that Rome is swarming with young protestors and no one cares about the Church anymore (tell that to the producers of every horror movie from the last two years).

As if to prove his point, there follows two hours of abbessmal nunsense, where nothing happens interminably slowly. One scene is literally just someone putting on a wimple for a full 90 seconds. Eventually they discover that one of the nuns is pregnant (I WONDER WHO IT COULD BE) and the antichrist is to be born, at which point the film promises to get interesting and then ends the moment Finchy from The Office (Ralph Ineson) utters the word “Damien” (roll credits).

In fairness the original The Omen was also preposterous, but was somewhat grounded by its real-world setting, rather than this horror movie convent complete with a solitary confinement cell they hilariously call “The Bad Room”. Unintentional laughter proves the only source of enjoyment, most notably a sequence where an actor called Nell Tiger Free barks and convulses by the side of a road for three minutes. It is ironic that the Church would be so short of material with all those Irish laundries.

The Latest Omen‘s (to use a more accurate title) one shocking moment in a delivery room is not enough to justify the existence of a film whose crux is whether or not Damien is going to be born. Does the Pope shit in the woods?