Damien: Omen II (Don Taylor, 1978)

Following the tragic events of the first film, Damien (Jonathan Scott-Taylor) was adopted by his father’s brother Richard Thorn (William Holden).

Growing up with Richard, his wife Ann (Lee Grant) and his cousin Mark (Lucas Donat), Damien is starting to become aware of his destiny.

While Damien struggles with his fate, Richard is plagued by a series of strange tragedies. 

And they all seem to have something to do with his nephew…

Writing a summary for this movie was hard.

Part of the issue is that The Omen happened. So the movie tries to meet both challenges, by splitting itself in two for new and returning viewers.

For returning audiences, the film brings Damien to the fore. He is no longer a small child, but a twelve-year-old at a military academy. 

While the finale of the original ended on Damien holding hands with the American president, teasing his rise to the top, Damien scales back slightly.

Here, the character is positioned as a member of American high society, yet only vaguely aware of how different he is.

For new viewers, the film offers a re-heated version of the previous film’s plot, as Richard discovers what Damien really is.

It is the law of diminishing returns, but there is still a lot to like about Omen II.

One of the ironies of this film is that Don Taylor’s director’s credit plays over an extended sequence filmed by his predecessor Mike Hodges (Get Carter), who was fired after the first few weeks of filming.

With both filmmakers passed, it’s hard to see what kind of film we may have missed. 

While it does follow the formula of the original, The film repositions the narrative POV around the title character.

At first, the characterisation seems a bit contradictory - between knowing and completely innocent.

It lacks the focus and sense of building tension - while Robert Thorn was the centre, Damien feels more like an ensemble piece.

 

The death scenes are well-mounted, but the film often feels like a more expansive rehash of the original, down to the casting of William Holden, who had been up for the role of Thorne but backed out.

But when the film treats Damien as a human kid, it gains something it is missing - stakes.

There is a moral ambiguity to chunks of Damien’s narrative, that feels more complicated and suspenseful than the inevitability of Richard learning the truth.

The scene that really crystallises what works about the movie is Damien’s confrontation with his cousin Mark. While the pair have not shared a lot of screen time, the dynamic between the characters is that they have grown up brothers. 

When he pleads for Mark to join him, it does not feel like Damien means his cult. Actor Scott-Taylor shows genuine sadness and fear that someone he loves is rejecting him.

In scenes like this, the film teases something akin to a Last Temptation of the AntiChrist (Last Hope?), as Damien wrestles between living as a human and his destiny.

If the film had spent more time on showing Damien as part of his family, the revelation of his destiny might have served as enough of a vehicle for suspense - not based on some abstract idea of Damien’s future misdeeds - but on a secret destroying a loving family.

Related

The Omen

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!  

The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)

After his child dies shortly after birth, Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) is offered the chance to adopt a newborn.

Keeping the adoption a secret from his wife (Lee Remick), Richard raises the child, named Damien.

As Damien grows, something strange is happening.

People are trying to warn the Thorns about their son.

But they keep dying…

I am not the biggest fan of supernatural horror.

I have seen The Exorcist (the director’s cut) but it did not resonate. 

With a new Omen in theatres, I decided to check out the original Omen.

 

Richard Donner’s watchword on Superman was verisimilitude - one can see a similar approach here. 

Apparently Donner wanted to steer the film toward a more ambiguous approach, where it was not clear if Damien was satanic.

He lost the battle, but the film benefits from how understated his approach to the supernatural is: the film’s uncanny moments generally take place in daylight, in wide shots that create the starkest juxtaposition with the film’s horror. 

The casting of Gregory Peck, that most distinguished and credible American film stars as a man powerless to stop what is happening, is a master stroke.

In an era when familiar icons and institutions were either being discredited or questioned, the image of Atticus Finch driven to the extreme act of murdering his child gives the climax a meta textual punch.

Gilbert Taylor’s chilly, diffuse cinematography lends the film a cool, detached view of the story, while the film’s accidental(?) deaths anticipate the intricate set-pieces of the Final Destination series.

  

There is an elegant simplicity to the way the film unfurls, and the way it grounds the supernatural by treating it matter-of-factly.

While lauded (justifiably) for its score, what is striking about the film’s approach is the lack of score.

The filmmakers let the various uncanny happenings take place with only diegetic sound.

One of Donner’s gifts was casting, and the casting and presentation of Harvey Spencer Stephens as Damien is exceptional. Its success becomes more pronounced in light of the sequels, which try to make Damien a defined character pushing the narrative forward.

It is not a reflection on the succeeding actors, but more a case of executing a defined concept. The child is basically a plot device, a catalyst for events. 

Mostly non-verbal, Harvey Spencer Stephens’ Damien is largely on the edges of scenes. There is something unstudied about Stephens’ reactions, a quality of child-like naïveté that the filmmakers recomtectualise into something more sinister.

He never seems that aware or genuinely malevolent. He seems more like a kid, teasing and parents.

There is a horror movie version of the Kuleshov effect going on with the way this performance is constructed.

 

Damien is at his most elliptical, most unknowable.

And when juxtaposed with the film’s uncanny, paranoid atmosphere, Stephens’ grinning tyke becomes genuinely unsettling.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!

OUT NOW: Abigail (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2024)

A group of kidnappers have taken a wealthy man’s daughter (Alisha Weir) hostage.

Hiding out in a house in the woods, the gang quickly realise their hostage is a vampire.

I try to avoid trailers. I find it helps add to the experience. I wish I had the opportunity with Abigail, because I have seen the trailer for this show up multiple times in front of other movies.

While I understand the need to sell the premise, the trailer leaves little to the imagination.

Riffing on the Dracula mythos, Abigail is an enjoyable genre-bender.

 

The film is well-cast, and fairly amusing.

It is not as singular as it feels like it should be - the surreal image of a blood-soaked ballerina starts to feel a tad repetitive, and when the film tries to dig into its characters, and turn into a story about broken family dynamics, it feels a little too late.

Dan Stevens has fun as a smug scumbag, Kevin Durand finds a little humanity in the film’s muscle-head and Kathryn Newton is excellent as a self-absorbed hacker (a role that feels like it is elevated by her casting).

Melissa Barerra, star of Radio Silence’s Scream entries, anchors proceedings with such ease her old franchises’ braintrust are probably regretting their decision to fire her last year.

For a while the movie is fun as a farcical take on Alien, with the team of hard asses stumbling around the mansion while being hunted, ambushed and/or tricked by a centuries-old vampire.

In the home stretch, the film decides to become a story about absentee parents, by trying to tie Joey (Barrera) to Abigail, who spends centuries trying to win her father’s approval.

This would work if Abigail herself was given any definition outside of what we see - and what we see is a fairly typical vampire. She presents herself as an innocent in order to lower her victims’ guard, and then shows no compunction in sadistically maiming and torturing the main characters.

The film wants us to care about Abigail, but it does not feel like a complicated attempt to juggle audience sympathies. Instead, it feels like a different movie: Joey and Abigail start relating to each other as though the events of the movie have not happened.

Overall, Abigail is fun. But it always feels like it is a few steps from greatness: somewhat inspired in its use of vampire tropes, more dramatically organic, and, frankly, a bit funnier.

But as is, it is a good time.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!

Cloak & Dagger (Richard Franklin, 1984)

Obsessed with the videogame Cloak & Dagger, young boy Davey Osborne (Henry Thomas) spends his non-game time roleplaying spy capers with his imaginary friend, the game’s lead hero Jack Flack (Dabney Coleman).

When he inadvertently stumbles onto a real covert mission, Davey finds himself on the run from real bad guys with real guns…

I have only seen this movie once before, on TV as a child.

It has been decades but I can still remember so many images from it: the old woman’s missing fingers; Dabney Coleman as the imaginary friend; the finale on the plane.

A remake of the 1949 suspense thriller The Window, Cloak & Dagger is kind of a miracle.

Directed by Richard Franklin (Roadgames) and written by Todd Holland (Fright Night), walks the line between a kid’s adventure with a suspense thriller.

The key is that the film invests in making sure the thriller elements have stakes.

Franklin, a devotee of Alfred Hitchcock, had already proven himself a sure hand with suspense in films like Patrick, Roadgames and his previous collaboration with Holland, Psycho II.

Here, he knows exactly how to deploy the Hitchcock playbook to create a tense man-on-the-run thriller. The only difference is that instead of Cary Grant or Robert Doant, it is a kid.

The film’s architecture of suspense is so solid and familiar, you could almost swap out Henry Thomas for an adult actor, and it would still work.

While it is not that violent, it never feels like the villains are soft-pedalled - henchmen matter-of-factotum debating whether a kid is worth asking for a bonus; villain Michael Murphy telling Thomas he is going to shoot him in the stomach and leave him to die.

The other element that builds the stakes is the portrayal of Thomas’s relationship with his dad.

In only a few scenes, Thomas and Coleman create a distinctly different dynamic to the one he has with Flack. Both characters are dealing with the loss of his mother, and Davey is clearly using his imagination as an escape.

What I appreciated about the film is that it does not go down the familiar route of making his father some kind of ultra-disciplinarian, or emotionally cut off.

Instead, it is Flack who exhibits a complete disconnect from danger.

Davey’s father is struggling to understand him, but is still present. What makes him interesting - and what enabled him to finally connect with Davey - is that he constantly trying to meet his son where he is at.

The other element I love about this movie is the way it conceives of the titular game, and Davey’s interest in it.

Jack Flack himself sums up what the movie understands about kids and how they imagine the world.

I was into spy thrillers as a kid, and I remember checking out books from the library on weapons and espionage.

Flack and the kid talk to each other with a vague approximation of spy lingo. The way Davey moves and talks feels like a kid who has watched a lot of movies like this.

Rather elegantly, the film manages to juggle the spy thriller plot with the lead character's arc of gradually moving away from his imaginary friend.

A gem.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

Check out the episode at the link below:

No Time To Die (review)

No Time To Die (commentary)

Pierce Brosnan - The Bond In Waiting 

GoldenEye & Spymaker - The Secret Lives of Ian Fleming

Nikita

Total Recall

Fire, Ice and Dynamite & Bullseye!

The Russia House

BrokenClaw

Lethal Weapon & Die Hard

If Looks Could Kill

Hudson Hawk

The Rocketeer

Black Cat

Timebomb

Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country

The Man From Barbarossa

James Bond Jr 

James Bond Jr. and other lost adventures, with Mark Edlitz 

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark I) 

Permission to Die

Memoirs of an Invisible Man & The King's Man

Live Wire 

Sneakers 

Blue Ice

The Harry Palmer Trilogy

Freddie as F.R.O.7 

Death is Forever

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark II), Part 1

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 (Mark II), Part 2 

Serpent's Tooth

Timothy Dalton's Bond 17 - comparing the different visions 

The Man who almost killed James Bond 

Point of No Return 

Death Train 

In the Line of Fire 

Undercover Blues 

The Hunt for Red October 

Patriot Games 

Clear and Present Danger

GoldenEye - the First Draft 

Cliffhanger

A Silent Armageddon & Light of My Death

GoldenEye - the First Draft (Part 2) 

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!  

Silver Bullet (Dan Attias, 1985)

A small town is plagued by a series of horrific murders.

One kid, Jake (Corey Haim), believes the culprit is a werewolf.

What a strange beast.

In the last few years, I have seen different podcasts and critics I respect bring up this movie. They were not exactly complimentary, and I cannot remember any particular analysis of the film’s themes. But they all seem to share a fascination with it.

I finally checked it out. And I get it.

Walking a weird line between adult horror and a kid’s adventure movie, Silver Bullet does not work the way its makers intended. In its failure, it is fascinating.

It reminds me of those later Friday the 13th movies, like Part 5.

While there are a lot of extras, and the film shows several exterior locations, the film has a strange uncanny quality - characters act in a limited, exaggerated way, and it never feels like they are existing in the same space.

There is a repetitive, one-note quality to most of the performances.

They almost feel like non-playable-characters in a video-game - the scenes of townspeople in the bar are just a series of the same relationship dynamics repeated with slightly different words.

The film starts to feel like a parody - the attack in the fog is meant to evoke tension, but just feels like a pisstake on stalking scenes in monster movies. It even ends with the hilarious gag of the werewolf beating a man to death with the baseball bat he has brandishing in every scene prior. 

It is made even funnier by the hard cut to Father Lowe standing beside a row of coffins.

The film swings awkwardly between Marty and the adults. It is almost hard to track a natural flow between the narrative threads.

What is frustrating is that the film has terrific ingredients: the relationships between Marty and his sister is meant to be important, as she reckons with his disability.

The real standout scenes are between Marty and his uncle, played by Gary Busey.

Busey is fantastic, riffing and playing with the other actors in a way that feels more spontaneous and manages to bring something like humanity to the film.

The idea of a werewolf priest is also a great conceit. His monologue about how killing his victims is absolving them of their sins is the kernel of an interesting horror movie.

A strange mess - it does not work as a horror film or as a kid’s film, but in its own strange, faltering way, it is watchable.

If you enjoy something I wrote, and want to support my writing, here’s a link for tips!