This has been referenced too many times for me not to have seen it earlier. 'The Omen' follows the early life of the Antichrist (which, as far as I understand, is basically what Jesus would have been like if he had ended up joining with The Emperor in the sixth one). His "dad" is the American ambassador to Britain, and the movie jumps back and forth from their fancy life to ancient ruins and whatnot. This is a cool contrast, and it's overlaid with the development of evil little Damien nicely.
It's very 70s though, and usually not in a good way. The music is alright, but the techno elements are laughable. Also, many of the effects are badly dated, and while horror effects dating often works ('The Thing', 'The Evil Dead', etc.) it just doesn't here. At one point a man is beheaded and I chuckled - that's not what should be happening.
After the first hour the film looses some of its momentum as I realise that things won't progress (in the way that they are clearly going to progress) as quickly as had been expected. Individual scenes tend to drag now and then too, and this occasionally stalls the flow of the film.
There are plenty of deaths though, which is fun. The viewer ends up looking out for interesting ways for people to die, and I can see a lot of 'Final Destination' in it. The whole photos that predict peoples deaths thing was cool, and some of the deaths were certainly interesting, if not particularly scary. There are plenty of goofy plot devices that don't quite work too, like why exactly did the satanic cultists bury the jackal in a grave marked as Damien's mother? Why not just dump it anywhere, rather than leave it as a big ol' clue? Maybe they meant to though, or maybe they really respected that jackal, I guess. The whole plot felt a little stringed together though, and while this enabled the movie to cram in plenty of cool grave yard scenes and ancient burial grounds, it damages the integrity of the story. For a Christian thriller film though, it wasn't half bad, and I could see elements of what would become things like 'The Da Vinci Code'.
The Omen: 36.5