The Omen is the most classical of story structures. Good vs. Evil. In The Omen franchise, Satan manages to hoodwink an unsuspecting family to take in his offspring and raise it. Satan’s goal is simple: Get into a position of global power and take over the world. The original Omen movie, written by David Seltzer, directed by Richard Donner and starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, was a groundbreaking sensation. Everyone was rattled by little Damien, the Son of Satan. Damien is perhaps the most famous child super villain to grace the silver screen. He has been a pop cultural reference used for almost fifty-years now when referring to a troublesome child. Not only is the original The Omen a pop culture phenomenon, but The Omen also spawned some really good sequels, with historic performances. Omen II: Damien being an exploration of a teenage boy coming into his own and understanding who and what he is. And then Omen III: The Final Conflict being a great bookend to a character who nearly fulfills his destiny but falls just short. Let’s rank this iconic franchise…
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5) The Omen: The Awakening
Terrible movie. Just a really boring, nonsensical, and campy sequel to a story that mostly thrives with serious (most of the time) tones, to go with sensical (again, most of the time) but thrilling action sequences. The Omen: The Awakening was made in Canada and I wish it stayed there, buried in a hole in the woods. I’m pretty sure Satan would even disown Delia, a young girl who is Damien Thorn’s successor. Hopefully we can all just pretend it’s not even canon…
4) The Omen (2006)
Similar to Psycho (1998), The Omen (2006) was not technically a shot for shot remake of the original, but it was nearly line-for-line and beat-for-beat identical to the original The Omen.
The Omen (2006) stars Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles as Robert Thorn and Katherine Thorn. Although both Schreiber and Stiles are fantastic actors, they were horribly miscast in this movie. Not only were Stiles and Schreiber miscast, but I did not find Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick to be a good Damien. If the filmmakers’ goal for Damiens look was to make him without a doubt look like the son of Satan, then they succeeded, but I felt as though that really hurt the movie. Damien should not be a creepy looking weirdo. He should look innocent and harmless. In my mind, the more effective sensation watching this movie would be to constantly forget that this boy is the son of Satan because of how innocent he looks.
The Omen (2006) was a total miss in my mind. Even with David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite and Mia Farrow giving solid performances in supporting roles, The Omen (2006) had absolutely no originality to it. It was such a carbon copy of the 1976 film that David Seltzer, who wrote the original screenplay for the 1976 Omen, received solo screenwriting credit for the 2006 version. Shit like this works in music with tribute bands just playing the hits for an audience. But it doesn’t work with movies. It feels exponentially duller and more pointless. Just a shameless cash grab…
The only cool thing about this movie was the marketing campaign, which effectively utilized the release date, June 6th, 2006, as its key marketing strategy, and it worked. The Omen (2006) went on to make over $100 million at the box office. Even though you could have just watched the same movie by renting The Omen (1976) at Blockbuster…
3) Omen III: Final Conflict
I almost feel like there should be an entire page worth of blank space between The Omen (2006) and Omen III: Final Conflict, because the quality gap between the two movies is so large. The Omen (2006) isn’t necessarily on par with other badly misguided remakes like Carrie and Planet of the Apes, meaning that it didn’t singe our eyeballs, but compared to the original trilogy, it does not compare…
Omen III: The Final Conflict was satisfyingly dark while still maintaining that entertaining quality that Omen II had in spades. Omen III stars Sam Neill as Damien Thorn, in what I believe to be one of his great performances. One of the many things great about this trilogy is how well they cast each iteration of Damien Thorn. From when he was a child in the original, a teenager in the sequel, and young adult man in the third outing, all of the performers were perfect. Essentially bringing that character to life, and making it easy to believe, as well as invest in the full story arc of Damien Thorn…
Omen III finally gives the audience the fully realized version of Satan’s master plan for Damien. Damien Thorn is as powerful as he has ever been in his life. In his early 30s, and acting as CEO of Thorn Industries, his namesake and springboard role into a political career. All in line with Satan’s original plan. But that damn Second Star of Bethlehem. The sign of the Second Coming. Damien, having had really no roadblocks in his life to this point, won’t let his life’s purpose be thwarted by this, especially since he is basically at the finish line. So Damien orders all babies (!!!) born on the morning of a specific date that was in line with the prophetic constellation to be killed. Damien’s devoted cult, in one of the darkest sub-plots in cinematic history, proceeds to brutally go about killing babies, hunting them down so viciously that it blows past horrific and becomes genuinely disturbing. Even though the original film and sequel were both very dark in tone, Omen III takes it to the next level. When dealing with the son of Satan, anything is possible. I loved how fucked up Omen III was, and the climax was a highlight in the franchise, and a perfect bookend to a dark and tragic story…
2) The Omen (1976)
The original The Omen, in my mind, is right in line with The Exorcist and Carrie and even Rosemary’s Baby when talking about transcendent horror movies that take religious or biblical themes, and spin that into nightmarish stories. David Seltzer’s original story and screenplay was so perfectly crafted and is actually incredibly simple. A family is unknowingly raising the son of Satan, but all Hell breaks loose, and it is their burden to kill the child. Simple at face value, but The Omen deeply explores tragedy, especially family tragedy. A strength of this movie is the complexity of the outstanding performances from the entire cast, particularly Gregory Peck. Peck is an outstanding actor, obviously, and his performance as Robert Thorn was one of the best in the history of horror. His performance is totally sincere and heartbreaking. Peck does such an amazing job at conveying the understanding of the obvious fact that there is something wrong with Damien, but refuses, and actually chooses, not to believe it, of course until he has to… In the wrong hands, the Robert Thorn role could really be a misfire. Lee Remick was also great, and her scenes with Harvey Stephens, who played Damien, did a good job of portraying an accurate dynamic of a frustrated mother/problematic son relationship, which played really well…
The Omen was directed by Richard Donner, who at this point in his career had done just a few comedies, but Donner has an eye for all genres, and did an excellent job with crafting mysterious and tense scenes with great pace. The real MVP of The Omen though, and maybe the MVP of the entire franchise, was Jerry Goldsmith, the composer of the original score. Goldsmith’s score is iconic and other than the characterization of Damien, is probably the most famous and well-liked aspect of all of The Omen movies (Goldsmith worked on The Omen, Omen II and Omen III). Goldsmith injected so much life and fear into the thrilling action sequences of this film and did a good job of setting the religious tone with a score. The Omen is an unforgettable masterpiece. The finale is such a conflicting sensation. The audience, for the most part, is rooting for a grown man to stab a little kid with a large knife. Even though this is the son of Satan, it is still a great moral quagmire that not only Robert Thorn has to deal with throughout the bulk of the movie, but the audience has to confront in the finale as well…
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1) Omen II: Damien
It’s hard to not rank the original as my #1, as it is such a goddamned classic, and Omen III: Final Conflict does not rank too far behind its predecessors either, but Omen II: Damien really delivered and was much more entertaining than its predecessor and successor. I was around the same age as Damien was in this movie when I saw it for the first time, so because of that, it had a great effect on me, as well as dissuaded me from attending a Military Academy, well that amongst plenty of other factors.
Omen II: Damien stars William Holden as Richard Thorn, Lee Grant as Ann Thorn, Lance Henricksen as Sergeant Neff and Jonathan Scott-Taylor as the titular namesake, Damien Thorn. Scott-Taylor’s performance as Damien is a standout as he is excellent in this movie. Even though Damien’s hair changes from wavy in the original movie to straight as a mop in the sequel, the resemblance is acceptable enough to buy into the continuity of the character. Scott-Taylor does a great job of straddling the line between innocent young man, and evil prophetic son of Satan. He really comes into his own throughout the movie, and there are moments where it seems like he could actually be a redeemable character. But just when he has us over a barrel, feeling sorry for him, Damien flips a switch and breaks bad. The twist ending in Omen II is entirely effective, and story-wise, an appropriate and logical twist as well. The tone of the movie slowly darkens throughout the runtime, and by the end is pretty bleak and defeating. Just like the original, Damien comes away victorious again…
The best aspects of Omen II, aside from the death scenes (and there are quite a few of them, especially the ice-skating scene on the lake) are the deceitful reveals of characters true intentions. To learn of their devotion to Damien and Satan is shocking upon first watch. It really illustrates the power and pull of satanists, and how insanely devoted they are. Satanists are wild cards, and make the Omen franchise unpredictable, and creepy. These characters are willing to die for the cause, and Damien discards them like they are nothing. Which makes their devotion that much crazier.
Omen II is probably the campiest of the three original movies, but it is a good pivot. With the original movie being so dark and containing minimal to no lighthearted fun, it was nice that Omen II adds some levity to the horror, and isn’t intent on being as dead serious as its predecessor, while also maintaining the dark and mysterious tone that makes these movies so great…
