A classic

After 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 ‘Devil’ 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 can’t really risk that the audience get attached to him, especially when you are planning to have the father killing him with some rusty knives. Furthermore, you can’t really expect a 6 years old child to act as if he was literally the ‘Devil’. Still, since Damien was barely on the screen, barely talked and didn’t 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 Peck’s 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 ‘Superman’, he became quickly one of the most promising directors at work back then. To conclude, coming back to our main feature, even though I don’t 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.