The Omen (1976)

'When the Jews return to Zion,
And a comet rips the sky,
And the Holy Roman Empire rises,
Then you and I must die.

From the eternal sea he rises,
Creating armies on either shore, 
Turning man against his brother,
'Til man exists no more.'



When looking through my girlfriend's family's extensive DVD collection I came across The Omen trilogy and chose that should be my next port of call for what to watch. I shall do four different reviews (three for each film and one for the trilogy as a whole). The final review is where I shall mention any problems which overlap into the other films or are not relevant till a later film.

There is a fair amount of mythology throughout the film, which makes obvious sense seeing as the film is based around the Antichrist and most of it is accurate. There is one poem in this film which was created for the film but many people believe to be from the Bible.

So the film starts off in a Roman hospital at 6am on the 6th of June and the (soon to be) US ambassador for Great Britain's wife has just given birth. However her husband is told that the baby has died and so, without telling her, her husband agrees with a priest to replace it with a motherless new born with only the two of them ever knowing about it. Everything seems fine for a long time, and several years pass before the film gets to the main story line.


It is here that we are introduced to one of the best child characters I have seen in a very long time. While watching the performance I kept thinking about how well played the character was, before realising that it was a mix of the acting and the way the child had been written.

Harvey Stephens plays Damien but is given a minor role throughout the whole film. The scenes he does appears in he doesn't have much dialogue and sometimes doesn't speak at all. But he doesn't need to. His emotions are shown clearly by his actions and facial expressions. This makes him feel more like an observer than the main character, but still keeps the focus on him.

For those that don't know, the Antichrist is said to be born of a jackal, and to emphasise his connections to dogs the film constantly has black Rottweilers follow Damien and keep him safe from both discovery and danger. These dogs also links in with a British folk law about The Black Dog (follow link for more information) who is said to be connected to the devil which also ties in nicely with the fact the film is based, for the most part, in Great Britain.

One of the problems I have with this film is that in the first half of the film there is a priest who is constantly trying to warn the ambassador who Damien truly is and the reason he gives for doing this is to be forgiven by God so he may enter heaven when he dies. The problem is we, as an audience, are never told why, what he has done wrong or why he has a strange mark on his thigh. This just isn't explained properly.

There is also an inconsistency throughout this film as well. This is that Satan appears to intervene whenever his son is in danger, going to be in danger or is in danger of his identity being found out. There are a few times that there are opportunities to stop the truth coming out and to keep his son safe yet they all seemed missed, either completely or the reaction is too slow to stop the people involved.

Before I sat down to watch this film I knew only a few things about it, and one of them was the iconic Nanny scene so I had pretty high standards for this film, despite its age. Where many films are quickly out dated by new filming techniques, better acting and better graphics, I feel that end most of the death scenes look pretty good, and some are still better than what newer films can accomplish.

The story idea is really good, and it is great it was turned into a trilogy as each film could take its time explaining things properly and could really go into detail about everything. This is exactly what the first film does. The pace feels just right, important points are rarely looked over. This film has truly stood the test of time as most of the shots are not outdated, the acting is top notch and there are no out-dated special effects. There are a few plot faults, such as the devil intervening too late or not at all and the forewarnings are not explained. This film was great fun to watch and I hope the other two are just as good.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, I highly recommend the first one.


Rating; 8.2/10