The Omen celebrates 50 years in June, and it still feels oddly relevant. Maybe it’s the current apocalyptic political climate that’s been keeping the idea of the Antichrist in the spotlight. Maybe it’s just that the movie feels so timeless, rooting its tale of helplessness and macabre, globe-trotting detective work in a mood too doom-filled to ever go out of style.
We all know who Damien is. He’s one of the spookiest horror movie kids. He’s the son of Satan, summoned to usher in the end times. But the original Omen movie chronicles just the first five years of his life. This kid doesn’t get going on his diabolical journey without a lot of help from some carefully selected grown-ups.
The recent prequel The First Omen offered up some intriguing context for the forces who help Damien find his way. But the 1976 film, directed by future Superman, Goonies, and Lethal Weapon helmer Richard Donner, sticks with a relatively simple baby-swap conspiracy. All it requires is a family so desperate for a child they’ll shrug off anything odd about its provenance—at least initially.
It really comes down to just one vulnerable guy. That Gregory Peck, who just over a decade earlier had won an Oscar for embodying the integrity-laden Atticus Finch, plays Robert Thorn is one of The Omen’s great successes. (Jerry Goldsmith’s eerie Oscar-winning score is another, along with his Oscar-nominated song “Ave Satani,” a literal cult classic.)
You immediately trust this character, especially as The Omen—which doles out instant numerology by opening on June 6 at 6:00 a.m.—introduces you to him at a moment of extreme crisis. His newborn son is dead, and his younger wife, Kathy (Lee Remick), hasn’t yet been told. “She wanted her own,” he says when adoption is suggested, but his thinking quickly shifts when a nun appears holding an orphaned infant. Behold this miraculous replacement! How convenient!
In the moment, Thorn agrees, encouraged by the notion that Kathy “need never know.”
The Omen then proceeds with its demonstration of why keeping big secrets from your partner is generally a terrible idea. The family moves into a sprawling mansion when Thorn becomes the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, but all matters of diplomacy soon take a back seat. At Damien’s fifth birthday party, his nanny cheerfully takes her life in full view of everyone.
Very soon after, a new governess named Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw) steamrolls her way in as a replacement, with a snarling Rottweiler in tow that she passes off as a stray—though we, of course, know the dog is a backup bodyguard for the little prince of darkness.
Then a wild-eyed priest, Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), barges into Thorn’s office, conveying a crucial message in the most unfortunately unhinged way imaginable. Thorn writes him off as a crackpot. But it’s harder to dismiss even-tempered photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner), who suspects irregularities in his images mean that Satan might be dropping hints about who’s next on his kill list.
But of all the awful things that happen, none are more heartbreaking than when Kathy is the target. While the infamous safari park scene, in which a herd of screeching baboons attacks Kathy’s car—attracted by Damien’s malevolence, no doubt—is a standout set piece, the aftermath, in which Kathy tells Robert that she needs psychiatric help for the doubts and fears she’s starting to feel, is truly emotionally wrenching. If Robert’s not going to tell her the truth about their son right then, when will he?
The answer is, uh, never, as Robert huddles in his turtle shell of denial until the very last possible moment. He doesn’t confess when Kathy confirms what Father Brennan somehow knew—that she’s pregnant with a child she doesn’t want—and won’t support her when she says she wants an abortion.
In maybe The Omen’s most horrifying scene not involving devil spawn, Kathy’s doctor fills her husband in on what she’s been telling him about her belief that Damien is “evil”—a casual confidentiality breach—and Thorn still insists he won’t allow her to take charge of her own body and make the decision not to have the baby.
It’s another shitty call by Thorn, but it’s all for nothing, because at that very moment Damien, who certainly doesn’t want a sibling, is nudging Kathy into falling over a high railing. She’s badly injured, including suffering a miscarriage, and is tucked away in the hospital for the rest of the movie… until Mrs. Baylock shows up to shove her through a window. It’s a cruel death, made worse by the fact that Robert never came clean to his wife. In their last phone chat, all he told her was that she needed to leave London ASAP. Too little, too late.
Would Robert have shared everything with Kathy if the circumstances were different? It’s because of Peck’s charisma that we keep rooting for him as he pinballs around Italy and the Middle East, searching for clues about Damien’s birth mother with Keith, who does get to hear Robert admit that “I don’t know who’s son I’m raising.” Satan’s army could’ve picked any man to raise Damien; clearly, their choice was the right one.
In the end, every adult who knows the Antichrist is walking among us and might want to intervene is killed in some gruesome way. But Damien—played by wee Harvey Spencer Stephens, whose naturalistic performance suggests Donner wisely guided him with minimal direction—has a supernatural safety net. The secret that Robert kept all too well dies with him, and nobody, including Damien’s new parents, the president and first lady of the United States, is any the wiser.
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