The Omen Reviews
Still atmospheric and genuinely frightening
Posted : 1 year, 8 months ago on 18 August 2022 11:250 comments, Reply to this entry
The Omen
Posted : 6 years, 7 months ago on 3 September 2017 05:41Tale as old as time, the adopted son of an older American diplomat and his wife turns out to be the antichrist. It could honestly happen to just about anyone. The Omen is not some taunt, dread-filled masterpiece of horror. Too much of it plays out like kitsch, and some of it is just downright loopy in its overheated Catholicism and moral panic. Still, thereās some jewels of sustained horror, solid performances, and Jerry Goldsmithās pulpy, overbearing score make The Omen more than worth the trip.
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The Omenās concept is at once audacious and steeped in the imagery and mythology of its Biblical inspiration/aspiration. Satan is here in the form of a toddler, and the entire narrative thrust is about the father possibly striking down the babe as if heās Abraham binding Isaac. Thereās also intervention to prevent the child-killing, but itās less divine then from murkier and darker quarters. No angel hand to prevent the striking knife blow here, instead itās a bullet from cops who think the ambassador has lost his damn mind.
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And perhaps he has. The strongest parts of The Omen are when the incidents occur and we question their validity. Are these two merely struck with bad luck and the easiest explanation is to blame it on the newest member of the family? Or are there really demonic forces at play? The air of sustained dread and slow-burning doubt and terror is immediately evaporated by the presence of Mrs. Baylock and her gigantic Rottweiler, in effect acting as a protective hellhound for the demonic child.
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Granted, Billie Whitelawās performance as Mrs. Baylock is effectively peculiar and sinister wrapped up in a polite-but-stern Irish nanny exterior, but the character is so clearly evil that sheās nearly cartoonish in comparison to the rest. Thereās no shock when the depths of her derangement are revealed as there was when the first nanny hangs herself at the birthday party. Roles like this require a more subtle touch, think of Ruth Gordonās warmly daffy neighbor in Rosemaryās Baby. Sheās the last person youād expect to act as a midwife for Satanās progeny, whereas as Whitelaw plays like an anti-Mary Poppins thatās clearly up to no good.
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Although Whitelaw and Lee Remick get to partake in one of the most bravura pieces of film-making in The Omen. Remick is in the hospital recovering from a fall when Whitelaw shows up in her room. Remick gets stuck in a white viel looking either like a virginal bride or a holy Madonna, and Whitelaw appears with a burning and intense gaze. Itās a quiet showdown punctured by the sight of Remick falling out of her window to her death. Itās shocking and horrific, and a point where The Omen shows its cards. The good guys may not win, and the devil may take dominion over the earth.
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It is with the introduction of the more outrageous elements of the plot that the dialog and character actions take a turn from deeply rooted in reality towards gloriously zany pulp. The sight of Gregory Peck tearfully reciting an imaginary passage from the Book of Revelations after learning of his wifeās death is dangerously close to camp. And the sight of him and David Warner digging up an infantās grave in an obviously artificial set standing in for some indeterminate European location is dangerously close to the hysterical.
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None of this is to say that Peck is slumming it here, or that heās giving a bad performance. Heās not. He successfully traces the line from happy nuclear family to crazed religious conspiracy theorist, and he manages to find pathos in the scene where he realizes itās all true as he cuts his sonās hair to find the Mark of the Beast. Same goes for Remick as his wife, who manages genuine terror in a zoo trip gone wrong and gets another stellar set-piece where Damien lets her fall off of a ledge thatās filled with her maternal desperation and panic.
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Harvey Stephens makes the biggest impression as Damien. His dialog amounts mainly to shrieks, giggles, and a few utterances of āmommyā or āno,ā but Stephens is positively terrifying. Has evil ever so looked so banal as it does here? I donāt know what they did to get him to stare so intensely, but it unnerves and works. His sweet smile at the camera as the closing image is a gut punch of evil triumphant.
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For all its silliness, of which there is ample amount, and gauzy cinematography to give it a veneer of period respectability, The Omen is still a well-made thriller. Itās best when it focuses on the psychological terrors and less so when it transitions into more conventional scares. But it also offers up the sight of Remick and Peck wrestling with a toddler thatās freaking out about going into a church. I think any parent can relate to their exasperation in that moment. Just beware of Irish nannies that show up with large breed dogs.
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A classic
Posted : 11 years, 3 months ago on 10 January 2013 09:04After watching the remake which was terribly underwhelming, I was really eager to check the real thing. First of all, I was really surprised how little you see this āDevilā during the whole movie when he is in fact the central character. Even though it was surprising, I was still able to understand this choice. Indeed, since you are dealing with a child, you canāt really risk that the audience get attached to him,Ā especially when you are planning to have the father killing him with some rusty knives.Ā Furthermore, you canāt really expect a 6 years old child to act as if he was literally the āDevilā. Still, since Damien was barely on the screen, barely talked and didnāt really act in a threatening way, why should we actually fear him? Eventually, it was not really a frightening horror flick but I still think it was pretty good though. First of all, the masterstroke was to cast such a high caliber actor like Gregory Peck in the lead part. Apparently, it was Peckās last successful movie and he managed to give some gravitas to his character. I also enjoyed Richard Donner's effective directing. For Gregory Peck, it was basically the end of his career but for Donner, it was actually the beginning of his feature film career and with his following directing gig, a small movie called āSupermanā, he became quickly one of the most promising directors at work back then. To conclude, coming back to our main feature, even though I donāt think it is really a masterpiece, it was still a pretty good horror flick and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.
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The Omen review
Posted : 12 years, 6 months ago on 2 October 2011 09:110 comments, Reply to this entry
The Omen review
Posted : 13 years, 8 months ago on 17 August 2010 09:230 comments, Reply to this entry
This Movie Is Rated 666
Posted : 15 years ago on 16 April 2009 05:21As in those earlier works, in The Omen, Satan is the unseen antagonist who uses a human in the form of a child to dote out his diabolical deeds of death, despair & destruction.
Y'know, for me, there's something about the 70's era that seems to really lend itself to the atmosphere of hellish dread that are these types of films. Maybe it's because since this was the decade in which "movie realism" had finally come to touch the ground (evidenced thru the films of actors like Dustin Hoffman & Al Pacino), the monster genre had really started to become a caricature of itself, many times to the point of being cartoonishliy silly. Therefore, one of the few avenues of true horror left was to those that focused the evil that resulted from the more sins of man, which of course can be personified best by he who most represents it, ol' Lucifer hisself.
Or maybe it's just because such evil could only come from the decade that was also responsible for polyster suits, platform shoes & dancing Travolta movies.
Whatever the reason,
The Omen carries with it a new-found injection of horror that rattled our nerves more on a biblical sense of hopelessness than thru the fear of a Hollywood-spawned rubber-suited creature of which many movie-veiwers had becomed largely desensitized to at this point.
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