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Critics Consensus: The Omen eschews an excess of gore in favor of ramping up the suspense -- and creates an enduring, dread-soaked horror classic along the way.
Critic Consensus: The Omen eschews an excess of gore in favor of ramping up the suspense -- and creates an enduring, dread-soaked horror classic along the way.
All Critics (43) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (37) | Rotten (6) | DVD (18)
Richard Donner directs more for speed than mood, but there are a few good shocks.
Richard Donner's direction is taut. Players all are strong.
This apocalyptic movie mostly avoids physical gore to boost its relatively unoriginal storyline with suspense, some excellent acting (especially from Warner and Whitelaw), and a very deft, incident-packed script.
A member of the Exorcist family, it is a dreadfully silly film, which is not to say that it is totally bad.
As long as movies like The Omen are merely scaring us, they're fun in a portentous sort of way.
Much of the film is terrific, unnerving stuff; but much of it is kind of loopy and much too silly to take even a little seriously.
The Omen contains some of the most memorable untimely deaths in cinema history.
Stands alone as a wonderful horror thriller.
Entertaining and yes, still ominous after all these years. A landmark of satanic cinema.
It was the performance of Harvey Stephens as the young Damien that invested the film with the chill of genuine credibility.
All references to prophecy and the Antichrist aside, The Omen achieves its horrors the old fashioned way.
Silly and bloody, but at times very effective.
Capitalizing on Gregory Peck's considerable reputation as stern but loving responsible liberal dad from To Kill A Mockingbird this film asks the question: "yeah, he's a good dad, but what if the kid wasn't his? What if the kid was the spawn of Satan himself, then what?" The work then follows the process of him affirming the identity of the child, switched at birth. What works is how gloomy foreboding is embraced as opposed to tacky jump scares, the go-to of the industry anymore. A second rate The Exorcist, perhaps, but still effective.
Super Reviewer
A rare type of horror film that is more about its mystery and building an ominous feel of danger than trying to scare us, and it works quite well when it's not too silly - as for instance with the ridiculous priest who babbles Catholic prophecies and could never be taken seriously.
One of the more iconic and popular horror films of recent history, "The Omen" takes all the unholiest of attitudes towards horror and amplifies them to compound scares. Not only is this film scary at times and freakish at others, but when you watch the premise, the reveals, and deaths, they hold significant weight. Several days later certain parts of this film roll around in your brain and you keep working out its genius. Much of what makes this film so engrossing seems to be the premise. An ambassador (Peck) and his wife (Remick) are told their child is stillborn, and the husband is prompted into adopting another child who has become orphaned. The child, Damien (Stephens), is actually the son of Satan and thanks to a prophecy, a priest knows to tell him that he must murder the child before he himself and everyone he loves, are killed. Of course the ambassador finds all of this ridiculous, but eventually goes on a mighty quest with a photographer (Warner) to find the truth before it's too late. There are also protectors to the child, including a satanic nanny (Whitelaw) and a Rottweiler who remains the boy's terrifying hellhound. Harvey Stephens as Damien is quite creepy, taking direction from Richard Donner quite well and giving a performance that eerily transcends any other demonic child in horror film history. His and Peck's performances greatly overshadow almost everyone else's, because they remain the hero and villain within the story. It's gruesome to think a child has to be killed, or that a child has that evil nested within themselves. Even at the very end you're not sure how everything will work itself out, and that is difficult since horror films are usually so cut and dry. This is a masterpiece of horror, and even today has some moments that will make you question whether you believe in the devil.
A man and his wife discover that their adopted son is the spawn of Satan. In this addition to the genre of Devil movies, all the normal conventions appear: religion is imbued with a mysterious ethos, evil is perceived as something outside man, and sex and science are demonized (although, it must be said that this facet of devil movies is less pronounced in The Omen than in other films). All this is not to say that The Omen is a bad film, just that it works to normalize a controversial cultural ideology. On the contrary, the film is well-made. The plot unfolds deftly, with few heavy-handed "must-happens," and Gregory Peck gives a strong performance. Richard Donner's direction is clever: most of the evil occurs around Damien rather than because of him, and this reduces most audiences' reticence about seeing a child involved in violence. Overall, this film remains a classic in the Devil movie genre and is well worth a critical eye.
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