This movie — the sixth film in the series and a prequel — has no right to be as good as it is.

Yet here we are.

It starts with Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson, so great in The Witch) learning that the Catholic Church is planning to bring the Antichrist to our world to encourage people to come back to the church. An older priest — Father Harris (Charles Dance) — tells him all of this, gives him a photo of a baby with the name Scianna and is then killed when a pipe graphically lands in his head and down his spine — this scene seems so much like how Brennan dies in the first movie — as stained glass rains down.

I was already sold.

As Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free) arrives from America to study at the Tanz Akademie — err, I mean, to become a nun at the Vizzardeli Orphanage — in the middle of the Days of Lead. As protests swell around her, she meets Cardinal Lawrence (Bill Nighy), who has been in her life since her birth, along with Father Gabriel (Tawfeek Barhom), Sister Silva (Sônia Braga), a strange nun named Anjelica (Ishtar Currie-Wilson) and her roommate and fellow student Olga — err, again, I mean Luz (Maria Caballero).

Margaret and Luz bond, deciding to go to a disco where the inexperienced American girl dances with Paolo (Andrea Arcangeli). As the rooms begins to spin, she passes out and wakes up back at the orphanage.

She soon becomes concerned about a girl named Carlita (Nicole Sorace) who has been confined by the nuns as she is said to have evil thoughts. At one point, Carlita shows Anjelica a drawing that disturbs her so much that she sets herself on fire, jumps off a ledge, hangs herself and falls through a window.

Brennan (yes, the same character played by Patrick Troughton in the original film, even if he’s said to be a Satanist in that movie) and Margaret believe that Carlita has been picked to be the mother of the Antichrist. When she sees Paolo one night, he tells her to look for the mark just seconds before a truck pins him to a wall. When she tries to hold him, Margaret walks away holding half of his body in an astounding moment.

Soon, she learns that she was impregnated by a demonic jackal — unlike the female one in The Omen — and is rushed to an abortion by two Catholic priests, which is as sacrilegious as it gets. Another car slams into them and she emerges from the car and suddenly she becomes Isabelle Adjani from Possession, seemingly now ready to give birth as she writhes in the filthy street.

Cardinal Lawrence watches over the birth of two children, a girl and a boy — the moment state his sex, the Jerry Goldsmith theme takes over — but Margaret is able to stab the priest and nearly kills her male child, but can’t. Luz stabs her and the conspiracy leaves, sending the entire place up in flames, the jackal burning and screaming. Carlita saves her and we see the two living in the mountains, just as Brennan finds them and says that she will be hunted down and that her son is named Damien and that he has been adopted by Robert Thorn and his wife Katherine.

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson, who wrote the script with Tim Smith and Keith Thomas, this film feels like it takes parts of Rosemary’s Baby, Suspiria and the aforementioned Possession while being its own unique film. Stevenson directed the “Butcher’s Block” season of Channel Zero, which is a neglected series that more people need to see. I’m so excited that more people are getting to see her work with this film.

Stevenson understands that the real horror — more and more these days — is that women’s bodies are being taken from them. She told SciFiNow, “Do you remember that scene where Gregory Peck is holding Lee Remick in bed and she says “I think I need you to call me a doctor because I think I’m going crazy.” That is what I remember more than anything. Even as a kid, that terrified me because it first introduced the concept of people dislocating from reality and not knowing what’s real and what’s not real. That scared me as a kid but continues to scare me even now. Especially as a woman. I think a lot of our life is deciphering what’s a threat, and what’s not a threat.”

From the paintings in the orphanage resembling the ones that Bugenhagen finds at Yigael’s Wall to a young Father Spiletto running from the fire, foreshadowing his death in The Omen, this film has something for the fans that love the original but new viewers don’t have the need to see every film in this cycle of movies.

This is such a unique moment, as it’s not just a sequel but a prequel that feels like it adds to the original while being able to have the quality to be judged on its own. I’m still just shocked by it and how much I loved every moment.