HorrorSpeak---Terror Awaits You in Every Forum!!!!: THE OMEN

THE OMEN (1976)

DIRECTOR: Richard Donner

CAST: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, Harvey Stephens, Billie Whitelaw

GRADE: hellborn ****

When I first saw this movie – a long time ago, if you must know – I only remembered the decapitation scene from it and the general feeling of boredom throughout. But hey – now I grew up and now I know much better what is and what is not cool in a horror movie; and let me tell you: this Omen’s value should not only be measured with one cut off head, no way!

It generates so much creepiness from the very opening titles that, provided the conditions are right – ‘round midnight, no talkers nearby – you’re about to be heavily spooked with this one! Of course, the person who helps a lot to create such tightly dark atmosphere is none other than Gregory Peck; I mean, whom else would you so easily believe he’s a father of a li’l devil, huh? But with Peck you accept it as the most obvious thing in the whole universe: now that we know your son comes from hell, how will you deal with the stuff, Gregory? It’s all deadpan here, neither Peck nor the rest of the cast try to seduce you with ironic winks and all the better for it. It’s a serious movie about a devil’s child and you only have to accept the facts and watch the tension grow, rottweilers bite, people die sudden deaths and the creepy boy flash evil smiles.

But it all goes like that: the goddamn boy, Damien, is not Gregory Peck’s character’s real son, as the real one dies at birth and Gregory decides to replace it with some other newborn boy who happens to have no living parents and is offered to Greg by a scary-looking priest. The deal’s done and no-one notices the swap. Well, at least at the beginning no-one does – several years (and dead bodies) later the ‘mother’ starts obsessing that the boy ain’t her own. The real darkness falls when after one nanny’s death she’s replaced by a genuine Guardian Nanny From Hell © , who’s a committed servant, bodyguard and inspiration for the boy; she brings the aforementioned rottweiler home and though Gregory Peck uses all his charisma in one juicy scene to convince her that the dog must go – it most obviously stays. The Peck character gradually discovers the shocking truth about the boy but doesn’t want to accept it wholly even though he sees all the people around his ‘son’ seem to be having strange and grisly accidents (there’s a very good scene in which Peck finally approaches the sleeping Damien, scissors in hand/tears in the eyes, and starts cutting his hair to find the sign of the beast; I have difficulty imagining any other actor playing so true and heartbreaking in this scene).

One more thing that’s very good about The Omen is that Damien does not realise what’s wrong with him – he’s not killing anyone on purpose, he’s scared by his own impact on everyone and everything around. Another favourite scene of mine is the one at the safari park, especially the introductory part with the giraffes: the animals take one look at the boy, turn graciously around and hastily retreat; not only the escaping figures of the giraffes but also the boy’s face expression fill this scene with so much inexplicable suspense and emotion that it’s hard to believe without actually seeing it.

However, anyone who’s waiting for some gorier moments is going to get’em, too. The impaling, the famous beheading, the corkscrew (or whatever it was) in the neck – all of them waiting for us to watch them over and over again. Sure the head flying in the air IS the gory highlight of the movie but what counts there is not just blood and the head itself (looking slightly fake, to be honest) but rather the scene’s preceding suspense, overall choreography – how the body falls, how it’s shown several times – and Gregory Peck’s sharp reaction to what has happened.

All those depressing events are accentuated perfectly by Jerry Goldsmith’s dark soundtrack and calmly directed by Richard Donner (don’t expect cameras to fly nervously all around Damien here – it’s very gentle moviemaking but it works damn well in this case).

On the DVD you get a commentary from Richard Donner and the movie’s editor – Stuart Baird (now he’s also a director: Critical Decision with Kurt Russell was his debut and Star Trek: Nemesis is his latest effort). I’m not sure if it’s such a good idea to listen to horror movies being commented upon by the creators – it seems to be spoiling their magic a bit – so I only listened to bits and pieces of this one here. Baird is rather lively on it, while Donner shows some of his Jekyll (a slow and unsure grabbing at old facts and pronouncing them in a dead-tired voice) and some of his Hyde (especially when he’s mimicking Baird in the recreation of the safari park scene, sounding as if his balls got bitten off by one of the apes). Good anecdotes fly around from time to time, it’s nice to hear the guys criticising today’s CGI overuse in horror movies (this happens when they discuss how they managed to whack off their priest without a single digital effect – just with Baird doing hell of a work in the editing room) but, all in all, this commentary seems to be kind of average. Unlike the movie itself.

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