The Omen

(1976)

Dir: Richard Donner

“Psycho killer, qu'est que c'est”

(Or ‘The Greatest Horror Films Ever Made’)

 

“Losing my religion.”

 

One way of getting someone like me to route against the forces of evil and cheer on the Christians is to make the villain a child. Ugh, they’re creepy. That’s essentially what The Omen is. Shameless propaganda against children. Okay, I’m joking, but there are an extraordinary amount of shots of a child staring at us with hellacious music playing over the top. Yes, we get it. He’s no Little Lord Fauntleroy.

The plot of The Omen is one of the most well-known in cinematic Horror history. As with most classics of the genre, the plot isn’t exactly a complicated one. The American Ambassador to Britain, played with typical gravitas by Gregory Peck, doesn’t want to tell his wife that she has given birth to a stillborn child, so he instead adopts one. Oh, and the baby turns out to be The Antichrist. Bummer. That’s probably how my parents felt too.

What follows is what the creators of the ludicrous Final Destination series have been trying to emulate unsuccessfully for about 53 films: a lot of very random deaths in very random ways that are actually creepy rather than hilarious. Okay, it helps that Richard Donner’s movie has the added presence of Catholic superstition hanging over it, and when isn’t that scary? Just ask The Exorcist.

Though the deaths are nasty and creative, there is nothing terrifying about them. The mood of the film is what creates the fear, as with any good horror. There is just such an ominous, serious feeling to everything that you never truly believe there is a way out of this. It helps that Peck can do despair like no other. Now that’s how you should look when you see a man’s head sliced off!

It doesn’t quite have the numbing chill factor of Japanese frighteners such as The Grudge for example, but it is still a master class in how to achieve scares through very little. We don’t need blood apparently. Just creepy little kids with chubby faces eyeballing us to a Classical score should do the trick.

**** / *****