“Drink the blood of Christ and eat His flesh. For only if He is within you can you defeat the son of the devil.”
Though the only big narrative surprise is the grim ending, Richard Donner’s The Omen is a finely-produced horror film imbued with a deep sense of craft. Its shocking set pieces are well orchestrated, its pacing restrained, its principals played straight, and its choral score unnerving, allowing the director to transform his varied locales (monastery, hospital, wildlife park, ancient ruins, cemetery) into settings for broad daylight nightmares.
Much like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, it uses a child as a vessel for pure evil incarnate—a terrifying notion all on its own, made even more unsettling by the fact that the child doesn’t actually do anything overt. Bad things just happen in his proximity while he looks on unfazed.
On the night that his own son is stillborn, American diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) is convinced by a priest (Martin Benson) to secretly adopt an orphaned baby whose mother died during labor. The decision, which he keeps even from his wife (Lee Remick), brings the family much joy, as Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens) grows into a happy little fellow. However, around the time of his fifth birthday, strange events begin to occur that suggest all is not right with the boy. A babysitter publicly hangs herself in his name, a mysterious replacement (Billie Whiteclaw) arrives unannounced, zoo animals flee from his presence, he is physically repulsed by a religious statue. His father tries to approach the situation with cool rationality, while his mother grows fearful and paranoid. Soon a disturbed priest (Patrick Troughton) arrives, claiming that Damien is the son of Satan and insisting that the Thorns reconcile themselves with God. Working with a photographer (David Warner) who noticed strange shadows in photographs of the recently-deceased, Robert investigates the priest’s claims and discovers that his son is indeed the Antichrist. This is the demonic spawn of Rosemary’s Baby raised to adolescence, and an exorcism won’t suffice. But exactly how much evidence is required to convince a man to sacrifice his own son?
The screenplay might get a bit too hokey with its improvised additions to biblical prophecy, but otherwise it treats its subject matter with enough sincerity that its spooky story hums along, resulting in an end-times horror film that trumps the surplus of the hackneyed devil-incarnate projects that became popular in the following decades.