The Omen (1976)How many parents suspect their child is a spawn of Satan? For wealthy ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) and his wife, Katherine (Lee Remick), the five-year old Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens) may just prove them right. After Robert discovers that his actual newborn son died shortly after childbirth in a Roman hospital, he is convinced by Father Spiletto (Martin Benson) to pretend that another newborn without a mother is his own. All seems well until Damien's fifth birthday, when a series of tragic events slowly begin to implicate a mysterious conspiracy between Damien and the forces of darkness.
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The Omen (1976) is often remembered as the story of the child Antichrist, Damien; so popular was The Omen that the name "Damien" unfortunately became synonymous with an unruly or wicked child. But what is interesting is that The Omen is actually less about the mischief of Damien than about the battle between good and evil for the future of mankind, with the boy being the catalyst. In fact, Damien rarely ever exhibits any malicious or destructive behavior himself; even an early scene where the family walks by a running river and he is hiding behind a tree shows him as mischievous, which is typical behavior for young children. Short of his likely likely future as a pampered rich boy, Damien appears very normal...until the first episode where his first nanny mysteriously and publicly commits violent suicide. From here, The Omen teases us with increasing frequency that there is something afoul with Damien and the unsettling allies that support him, including a menacing Rottweiler. (Rottweilers are actually incredibly sweet and loyal dogs, contrary to their depiction in the film.) After the suicide, Robert is harried by the press--including a photographer with a keen eye named Keith Jennings (David Warner)--but his most surprising encounter comes from the overwrought and emphatic Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who pleads to the ambassador to accept Jesus Christ into his heart to shield him from the devil. What seems like ravings becomes tragically clear in time...too late it would seem. Robert learns that all was not as it seemed when he adopted Damien five years past. While Father Brennan seems determined to protect Robert from Damien, the new governess--known as Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw)--mysteriously manifests to offer her services, while secretly acting as a sentinel and handler for the future herald of Armageddon. Mrs. Baylock's mannerisms and barely concealed personal agenda is reminiscent of Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, whose puritanical exterior shelters an inner darkness. The real conflict of The Omen has to do with Robert's reluctance to believe his escalating misfortunes are the result of a prophesy implicating his adopted son as a scion of evil. But as he is consistently confronted with coincidence after coincidence, he begins to suspect that he and his family are part of a war on a scale that he is ill-prepared to manage.
The Omen was released in the 1970s, alongside several other horror films about the Antichrist and portents of the end of days, including Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Furthermore, all of these films deal with the incursion of evil into the home, and all feature varying degrees of deception, conspiracy, and corruption fostered in the fertile soil of mistrust. Even Damien's entrance into the Thorn family was born on a lie--that Damien is not really their son--and Robert subsequently conceals this fact from Katherine. It could be argued that films like The Omen represent a kind of social cynicism and growing sense of disillusionment with institutions established to better our lives, but in reality do just the opposite--be it government, religion, or the family unit. Alternately, The Omen unquestionably proclaims the powers of darkness to be real and terrible, itself a conspiracy designed to destroy all that is good in the world. But in this "modern" world, there is no faith in religion, and no fear of the devil to bring ruin to mankind. (As the famous line from The Usual Suspects goes: "The greatest trick the devil pulled was making the world believe he didn't exist.") Robert finds himself surrounded by religion--from his assignment in Rome to his ill-fated attempt to bring Damien to a wedding at a church--but there is no indication that faith has any real part in the Thorn family. It could be argued that their lack of faith makes their inability to recognize the threat in Damien or Mrs. Baylock the reason why the powers of darkness are able to get a foothold in their lives at all. Robert always appears to be a step behind in this battle of good and evil because until the very end, he really doesn't believe it. In fact, were it not for the ominous musical score filled with intense Latin chanting, or the direction by Richard Donner, suggesting an unholy link between Damien and the Rottweiler, and other malevolent insinuations, The Omen might very well appear to be a chronicle of Robert Thorn's terrible nervous breakdown.
Another, deceptively simple interpretation of The Omen is also how it represents the importance of discipline for a child. While Damien is rarely seen to act up, when he does--such as when his parents try to take him to church--he is horrid, smacking Elizabeth across the face and screaming bloody murder. We've all been in a grocery store or a mall and seen some parent desperately trying to rein in their shrieking toddler, only to be filled with a mix of pity and annoyance. Damien's parents seem to be rarely involved in their own son's upbringing; even before Mrs. Baylock, they had another nanny who took care of the boy while they hosted a grandiose party in their son's name. In one scene, when Damien is playing with the billiard table, Elizabeth--under stress from discovering she is pregnant again--snaps at him and demands that Mrs. Baylock remove him from her presence. The Thorns are also unusually willing to let the unsolicited Mrs. Baylock spend a great deal of close time with their son--surprising given the traumatic loss of their previous nanny. It could be argued that Robert and Elizabeth's lack of discipline over Damien sets the groundwork for what is sure to become a developmental stage feeding frenzy, where bad behavior is not adequately punished by those ostensibly in a position of authority. ("Spare the rod, and spoil the child.") Like the frequent allusions to esoteric numerology and the Book of Revelation, The Omen is like a parable open to interpretation.
Recommended for: Fans of a startling horror film about the Antichrist as a little boy, and the conspiracy that surrounds him. With lots of shocking moments and a plot that ratchets up in intensity, it is a thrilling yarn about a child that has the devil in him...something many parents can no doubt appreciate.
The Omen was released in the 1970s, alongside several other horror films about the Antichrist and portents of the end of days, including Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Furthermore, all of these films deal with the incursion of evil into the home, and all feature varying degrees of deception, conspiracy, and corruption fostered in the fertile soil of mistrust. Even Damien's entrance into the Thorn family was born on a lie--that Damien is not really their son--and Robert subsequently conceals this fact from Katherine. It could be argued that films like The Omen represent a kind of social cynicism and growing sense of disillusionment with institutions established to better our lives, but in reality do just the opposite--be it government, religion, or the family unit. Alternately, The Omen unquestionably proclaims the powers of darkness to be real and terrible, itself a conspiracy designed to destroy all that is good in the world. But in this "modern" world, there is no faith in religion, and no fear of the devil to bring ruin to mankind. (As the famous line from The Usual Suspects goes: "The greatest trick the devil pulled was making the world believe he didn't exist.") Robert finds himself surrounded by religion--from his assignment in Rome to his ill-fated attempt to bring Damien to a wedding at a church--but there is no indication that faith has any real part in the Thorn family. It could be argued that their lack of faith makes their inability to recognize the threat in Damien or Mrs. Baylock the reason why the powers of darkness are able to get a foothold in their lives at all. Robert always appears to be a step behind in this battle of good and evil because until the very end, he really doesn't believe it. In fact, were it not for the ominous musical score filled with intense Latin chanting, or the direction by Richard Donner, suggesting an unholy link between Damien and the Rottweiler, and other malevolent insinuations, The Omen might very well appear to be a chronicle of Robert Thorn's terrible nervous breakdown.
Another, deceptively simple interpretation of The Omen is also how it represents the importance of discipline for a child. While Damien is rarely seen to act up, when he does--such as when his parents try to take him to church--he is horrid, smacking Elizabeth across the face and screaming bloody murder. We've all been in a grocery store or a mall and seen some parent desperately trying to rein in their shrieking toddler, only to be filled with a mix of pity and annoyance. Damien's parents seem to be rarely involved in their own son's upbringing; even before Mrs. Baylock, they had another nanny who took care of the boy while they hosted a grandiose party in their son's name. In one scene, when Damien is playing with the billiard table, Elizabeth--under stress from discovering she is pregnant again--snaps at him and demands that Mrs. Baylock remove him from her presence. The Thorns are also unusually willing to let the unsolicited Mrs. Baylock spend a great deal of close time with their son--surprising given the traumatic loss of their previous nanny. It could be argued that Robert and Elizabeth's lack of discipline over Damien sets the groundwork for what is sure to become a developmental stage feeding frenzy, where bad behavior is not adequately punished by those ostensibly in a position of authority. ("Spare the rod, and spoil the child.") Like the frequent allusions to esoteric numerology and the Book of Revelation, The Omen is like a parable open to interpretation.
Recommended for: Fans of a startling horror film about the Antichrist as a little boy, and the conspiracy that surrounds him. With lots of shocking moments and a plot that ratchets up in intensity, it is a thrilling yarn about a child that has the devil in him...something many parents can no doubt appreciate.