The Omen (1976)
An American ambassador learns to his horror that his son is actually the literal Antichrist.
- Director: Richard Donner
- Genre:Horror / Mystery / Thriller
- Runtime:111 minutes
Cast
Gregory Peck : Robert Thorn
Lee Remick : Katherine Thorn
David Warner : Keith Jennings
Billie Whitelaw : Mrs. Baylock
Harvey Stephens : Damien Thorn
The premise of The Omen comes from the end times prophecies of Christianity. The story, set in Fulham, England, tells of the childhood of Damien Thorn (said to have been born on June 6 of that particular year at 6:00AM), who was switched at birth in Rome with the supposedly stillborn child of a wealthy American diplomat with only the husband’s knowledge, in order to keep it from affecting his wife. Damien’s family is unaware that he is actually the offspring of Satan and destined to become the Antichrist. His father, Robert Thorn (named Jeremy Thorn in the original book), eventually begins to realize his son’s true nature with the help of a photographer named Keith Jennings (David Warner), after numerous people connected to Damien die in tragic accidents. After Damien’s first nanny hangs herself at Damien’s fifth birthday party, a new nanny, Mrs. Baylock, arrives to tend to him. A priest who knows about Damien begins stalking Robert and is eventually the one to first point out that Damien is the Antichrist and that he intends to kill everyone in his way—including the baby that Robert’s wife is supposedly pregnant with. The priest later dies in a bizarre accident (he is impaled by a church spire hit by lightning). Shortly after, Katherine—Damien’s mother and Robert’s wife—tells a shocked Robert that she is indeed pregnant with another child. In order to prevent her pregnancy from progressing and creating competition, Damien causes his mother to fall over a railing and lose the baby that she is carrying.
Robert and Keith seek the hospital in which Damien was born to find his true mother. They find that the hospital burned in a horrible “accident,” along with several people and all of the records. They then learn where one of the survivors, the head priest at the hospital, can be located and are led there to find he is in grave health. He tells them where to find the mother. The mother turns out to have been buried at an ancient and abandoned Etruscan grave-yard. They then find her grave, and next to it Robert’s true son’s grave. They take off the cover of the grave to find the mother was a jackal confirming the realization that Damien is not a human. Keith beckons with Robert to leave but he wants to uncover the other grave, hoping it contains a similar corpse and to gain hope that his real son could be alive some where. To his horror, the grave holds a human child and the skull of this child has a wound showing it was murdered at birth. They are then attacked by a pack of Rottweiler dogs and barely escape the cemetery.
During this turn of events Katherine is thrown out of the hospital window by Mrs. Baylock and dies. The devastated Robert travels with Keith to Israel to find a man named Bugenhagen, an archaeologist who knows how to stop the Antichrist. Robert learns that he has to stab Damien with the seven daggers of Megiddo to prevent Damien from killing again. Sickened by these instructions, he throws the daggers away. Keith runs to retrieve them, but is decapitated gruesomely by a pane of glass atop a run-away truck. A now-determined Robert returns to England with the daggers, intending to kill Damien. Read more
