Average Rating: 7.1/10
Reviews Counted: 40
Fresh: 34 | Rotten: 6
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Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 4
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 1
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
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Satan's son has arrived on Earth and He's not about to let human parents get in the way. When his wife Katherine's (Lee Remick) pregnancy ends in a stillbirth in a Rome hospital, U.S. diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) substitutes another baby, whose mother died. Little Damien (Harvey Stephens) thrives, but, at his fifth birthday party, his nanny mysteriously dies; Father Brennan (Patrick G. Troughton) also expires after warning Thorn that he has adopted Lucifer's son. While sinister new nanny
Jun 25, 1976 Wide
Sep 4, 2001
20th Century Fox
All Critics (40) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (43) | Rotten (7) | DVD (34)
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.
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.
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.
Gory original Satanism saga; popular but plodding.
...fares a whole lot better than its 2006 remake...
... a slick, polished, and professional thriller that combines an intriguing mystery with periodic eruptions of bloody violence ...
Goldsmith's score took the film to a level horror films generally never attained in the 1970s.
The fairly sedate pace and tone may be a bit dry for today's viewer, but by the film's disturbing climax and simple, superbly creepy final image, one appreciates how well it helped build the suspense.
Viewed thirty years on, Richard Donner's demonic classic remains one of the finest horror movies to have been put out by a mainstream studio.
The Omen Collector's Edition DVD is a must for the fanatic, but everyone else may want to make do with what they have.
This bloated package proves that the number of the beast for some Collector's Editions is two discs.
A bald-faced lamprey hitching its razor-tipped maw on the chassis of The Exorcist, The Omen's Sunday school parable of gothic Cathsploitation comes twice as thick and thrice as pious.
Damien looks like a mini Angus Young -- gotta love it!
This is not the only DVD of The Omen to come out, but it is the unholy grail.
One of the 1970's true-blue horror classics, The Omen now hits DVD in its definitive package.
Influenced by the success of The Exorcist, this film takes the horror genre one step further and instead of a girl being possessed by the Devil, we have a boy who's the Antichrist.
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The 70's brought us a fair amount of ghoulish classics. The masterpiece of all those movies was definitely The Exorcist. Pretty much born only out of the critical and financial success of that movie, The Omen fails to live up to it's esteemed status. When you compare it to horror cinema of recent years which consists mostly of dumbly unrestrained slashers and the wave of soul crushingly boring "found footage" movies you really recognise the strong performances of the veteran actors and the skill being executed in Richard Donner's inventively scary direction. He manages to produce great tension and cuts down on a lot of gore. But it lacks the unescapable grip and fails to promote the same sheer terror and audience vulnerability that The Exorcist did. I never felt in danger, neither did I find it particularly scary. I didn't jump at any point, or care what happened to the possessed child who is at the centre of the film. It's technically well polished, there isn't anything unspeakably awful about it. I've seen a lot worse recently, but in the end the plot, characters and mystery is taken from another film. I might have enjoyed it more if it tried harder to be something vaguely unique. If you plan on giving into the hype with the convenience of not having seen horror films previously with satanic demon children your likely to have a real blast. But I have, and so have many other cineastes who love watching Gregory Peck stab evil in the chest. It's unremarkable, but not without merit.