In theaters Friday: ‘The First Omen’

A prequel to the Oscar-winning 1976 horror classic The Omen — commonly listed among the scariest movies of all time — The First Omen hits theaters Friday.

The first film dealt with a family unwittingly adopting the Antichrist in the form of a little boy named Damien, and the prequel sets up how that little boy came to be.

In the new movie, Nell Tiger Free plays Margaret Daino, a young American training to becoming a nun. She is tapped to work at an orphanage in Rome but comes to uncover “a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate.”

Free tells ABC Audio she was well-acquainted with the Richard Donner classic that came out more than two decades before she was born. “I was very, very familiar. It’s one of my favorite, favorite horror films of all time,” the actress says.

“I watched it for the first time, when I was really young, I was like, 11,” she confesses with a laugh, before explaining, “Yeah, I used to watch films that were wildly inappropriate for my age range on a regular basis, without my parents knowing.”

She said her young self was “sufficiently traumatized” by the original film and notes she’s revisited over the years, explaining, the film “stands the test of time and is still traumatizing to this day.”

Free adds, “So they were big shoes to fill. And hey — listen, I’m one of them — horror fans, we’re all pretty intense. Like, we take it seriously. Especially something that’s like a horror dynasty, like The Omen. You know, it’s like you can’t really get that wrong.”

“I’m not gonna lie to you, it was a little bit of pressure!” she adds with a laugh.

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