Hooray for Catholic conspiracy! Too bad Satan saw right through your plan. Silly church!
This movie is kinda great. Every attempt to discover the true evil of Damien is thwarted in the best ways - need to find the record of his birth? Hospital burned down and destroyed all of the records and most of the people working. Photographer finds some “interesting smudges” suggesting danger? Dog attack. Need to kill Damien with a bunch of daggers to stop his evil? Cop will shoot you before the first downstroke.
As a bonus, if you want to have an abortion, but your husband won’t let you, Damien will fix that little problem for you. And then his nanny will push you out of the hospital window while you’re recuperating.
Like I said, this movie is kinda great.
Corey says:
To start, this film has one of the purest devotions to Satan I've ever seen in a film.
"It's all for you!".
It's all for you. And then she just jumps. It's beautiful in the simplicity and execution. And it shows just how awful religion, any religion, can be.
But it's cooler here, 'cuz it's the devil. And the devil is cool.
One of the highlights of this film for me is the amazing David Warner. This dude has played some evil marter farters during his career. He was Master Control in Tron, he played that evil ass Cardassian who tortured almost naked Picard... What can't this guy do?
Avoid sheet glass that'll decapitate him, that's what.
Decapitations and jumping nannies notwithstanding, The Omen suffers under the weight of a film that is based around a child that is not actually centered on the child. You get the feeling that they fed Damien a bunch of Benadryl during the shooting of the film. Unless this kid is screaming at the top of his lungs, he looks like he just smoked his first blunt at a Cypress Hill concert. For Christ's sake, you're the antichrist! Try to show some pizazz in being bored out of your skull.
Fucking kids. Don’t know how to fucking act.
Furthermore, the middle of this film takes FOREVER. I don't care about Gregory Peck playing detective. I just care about the sinister revelations. The buildup to the part where they show Damien's mom's grave has a dog in it? Just give me the dog part. All that ridiculous bullshit about Damien's foster mom? Just have the new nanny off her and get it over with.
Salty says:
Are you making a film about the antichrist? I’m in. I can’t help it, when it comes to movies about Lucifer and his mischievous doings I can’t resist. From Rosemary’s Baby to Devil Dog (yeah, there’s a movie called Devil Dog and I like it), I don’t know what it is exactly, but it doesn’t matter what Satanic schlock you’ve made, I’ll give you some money and an hour and a half. Do you like To The Devil A Daughter? Me too! Do you want to hear the gospel according to Alucarda? Pull up an uncomfortable pew. We all have our weaknesses, and yet, in spite of mine, I would be reluctant to say that I even like The Omen.
In its efforts to bring the story to date (for the 1970’s), the film strips out of a lot of clichés. Gone are the Brotherhood of Satan robed figures with their black candles and epic monologues and in their place we get some “as-is” neurotics emerging from the shadows to protect the Devil’s spawn. What motivations led them to a pact with Satan? All we know is that it’s all for Damien, whatever “it“ may be. You get the impression that all that evil has to rely on is an f-troop of church dropouts and stern mental patients. Gone too are the over-the-top incarnations of Satan or possession (we don’t even get any Eyes Wide Shut sex parties). There are no pits to hell or individuals distorted by an evil that infests their souls, no phlegm-laden baritones threatening do-gooders with damnation, nor any levitation, pyrokinesis, or even spontaneous expulsion of bodily fluids. Almost all of my favorite things about the subgenre have been cut out and discarded.
Instead we get Damien, a child born of a man and a dog (okay, that part is a really nice touch), who spends most of the film oscillating between sinister glances and looks of emotional indifference. A child who really can’t defend himself beyond calling for minions to assist him lest there be no apocalypse. Damien is the selling point of a film that plays more like a redundant religious version of Clue (Sinister Coincidence in the street with the plate-glass – *spoiler* Sinister Coincidence is always the killer) than a real horror movie. People are dying around him due to some photograph-able (just because, that’s why) preternatural force that really likes to make deaths elaborate, and Damien is just around. Sure Damien is unholy – he’s rich, un-baptized and he’s got a cool birthday – but just because you need to be killed by special knives doesn’t mean you’re worthy of the sacrilegious adoration. Maybe it’s just that I don’t like kids.
So, if you want to watch a great movie about Satan try The Ninth Gate or even The Mephisto Waltz (I am honestly sorry that Alan Alda is not more horror movies) and let me know, I will bring the unguent and a big compass (nobody likes an asymmetrical pentagram), but if you want to spend a movie watching a bunch of people get killed to protect a pale autistic child you’ll have to get someone else to present you with the chalice of blood.
| Maire | Corey | Salty |
|---|---|---|
| ☆☆☆ | ☆☆ | ☆☆ |
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