The Omen (1976)

The Omen is one of those films that is regarded as a classic or at the very least an important one. The film is the first of five (including a 2006 remake) sees Gregory Peck playing an ambassador sent to the UK with his wife and son (who isn’t really his son but pretends to his wife) when Patrick Troughton tells him that he should get Damien seen too. As the film progresses, the desire to get Damien baptised grows stronger and the deaths and attempts to prevent this from happening get more and more extreme. The film is notorious for all the things that went wrong and that is perhaps more interesting than the film itself which is always a problem.

The plot is quite plain and straightforward however its helped with lovely performances. Gregory Peck is an actor that I’m not totally wild about as every film that I have seen him in (which currently stands at 3), the film takes about 2/3 of its time setting up the film before Peck gets into top gear and he does the same here. When he’s good then he’s very good but it takes too long to see it. David Warner is brilliant in it. In fact he’s brilliant in everything he is in and it’s a shame that he doesn’t make it until the end of the movie but his exit was quite impressive. Anotehr great piece of casting was Patrick Troughton, now I am being biased here because I am a Doctor Who fan and even if I wasn’t then I would still have enjoyed his performance because it was a good but all too brief performance. The kid playing Damien (Harvey Stephens) is quite creepy and even though he doesn’t say anything he still manages to have an air of creepiness about him which is what you would expect really.

The film isn’t particularly scary.. I don’t think that its rubbish but there are large chunks of the movie that were not very engaging. The Omen is a film that has a status in movies that it doesn’t quite deserve. Not sure what the other films are like but usually sequels tend to be worse than the previous films so I don’t hold out high hopes for it. The Omen had potential but for some reason it didn’t quite reach it.