Of course, it was just like this when I was a teenager (Damien: Omen II (DVD))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	Damien: Omen II (DVD)
Date:	09/03/02 (253 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun for all the family

Disadvantages: If you are in the Manson Family

If you haven't seen 'The Omen', don't read this review as I am about to give away the ending.

What was subversive about 'The Omen' was that, unlike 'The Exorcist', it was about a genuinely evil child. Regan, the possessed girl in 'The Exorcist', is an innocent infected by something external. The chubby little kid in 'The Omen' is simply evil, wholly and irretrievably wicked. The final frame of that film, with Damien holding the hand of the First Lady at his father's funeral, tells you everything you need to know about how easy it is going to be for the Son of Satan to rise through the ranks of the American political system. It's a neat joke for a film made a few years after Richard Nixon was President, and makes a sequel wholly unnecessary.

Of course, you don't make shedloads of money with a film that has an open-ended conclusion and then say to yourself, nah, let's leave it at that. With only Leo McKern available to make a cameo appearance (and get killed), virtually everything about this film is different - entirely new cast, new director (actually, two directors, because Mike Hodges started the film and was fired), and a subtly different structure.

The extent to which this film is a rather subversive is in the way that Damien, now a teenager, and played rather well by Jonathan Scott-Taylor, works his way seamlessly through the higher echelons of the ruling class; star student, adored by everyone, and linked irretrievably to capitalism, money and politics. It's like a horror movie directed by Karl Marx, making an absolute link between money and the work of Satan.

One important difference between this film and its predecessor is the complete absence of atmosphere; this is not a gripping suspenser, this is a horror cartoon. From the opening sequence, in which McKern and Ian Hendry are buried in a collapsing temple having seen Damien's face on an ancient wall,
the film's action stops every five minutes for a ridiculous shock killing. Old ladies die from unexpected heart attacks, doctors are cut in half, men are crushed by trains and in the most famous sequence, a man falls beneath the ice of a frozen lake, and is sucked around by the current. There is no suspense any more, just the enthralled wait for another poor sucker to rub Damien up the wrong way and get theirs in a suitably ridiculous accident. The evolutionary end of this is the bit where Damien's beloved cousin (vague subtext of homosexuality here, not quite sure why) realises that his friend is the Antichrist, and refuses to get along with him, in the sure and certain knowledge that he is thereby guaranteeing a psychic lobotomy.

'Damien: Omen II' is like a spell in the gladiatorial arena - you wait for the carnage, and are repeatedly awarded with insane killings. It's not excessively gory - even the most notorious sequences (the bisection and another bit where a woman has her eyes pecked out by a raven) are unpleasant but strangely clean, somehow easy to watch.

It's not badly made by any stretch of the imagination, and the cast is very strong - William Holden, Sylvia Sidney, Lee Grant (though it's hard not to laugh when you see the bloke from 'Falcon Crest as one of Satan's smarmy henchmen) - and it's all mounted with the requisite glossy high-quality. But compared to the diabolical neatness and inevitability of its predecessor, and lacking the outstanding central performance of Gregory Peck, the ending seems like a cheap shot, rather than a shivery triumph for unstoppable evil. 'The Omen' took place in a weird, supernatural world of plausible but unnatural happenings - 'Damien: Omen II' is undeniably entertaining, but completely hollow.

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