The Omen (1976)

What’s the Story?

In Europe, U.S. ambassador to Britain Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) spares his wife Katherine (Lee Remick) from the tragic news that she's lost her first-born son in childbirth by substituting an orphaned baby. The boy is brought up in their wealthy English household as Damien (Harvey Stevens), a quiet kid around whom weird and scary things seem to happen. A priest warns Thorn that Damien is Satan's spawn. As the creepy incidents pile up, Ambassador Thorn, with the help of a reporter and few other allies, starts investigating Damien's shadowy origins, and begins to uncover that he's been conned by an underground conspiracy of devil-worshippers into adopting the legendary antichrist. This incarnation of all evil will usher in the End of the World.

Is It Any Good?

This 1976 shocker is sturdily built but predictable and downbeat, with its extravagant death scenes tending to stand out more so than the lugubrious narrative. The plot sounds pretty compelling indeed, but in cinematic terms it mostly translates as a string of spectacular deaths (usually in horrendous accidents that are not exactly Acts of God) for anyone who poses a threat to Damien -- with lots of "dead" space in between, as Thorn struggles to confirm/deny the omen-ous truth. Characterizations don't go very deep.

As far as themes or any sort, there's the sense of a modern, secular world in which the bulwarks of traditional Christianity are absent or weak. Thus even decent people like the Thorns are powerless when an unseen but very hands-on devil and his minions take the offense.