Omens, Ranked
There’s a pretty basic horror-movie hook to The Omen, the 1976 classic about a couple who inadvertently adopt the Antichrist. What if your seemingly innocent young child was actually evil incarnate? That taps into many parents’ primal fears, and it provides for plenty of disturbing moments, connecting a pure, helpless child to heinous acts of violence.
It’s no surprise that The Omen was a hit, capitalizing on the popularity of horror movies like its obvious influences The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, as well as paranoid political thrillers like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View.
But where do you go from there? Once the child’s evil has been revealed, what’s left to explore? Producers of subsequent Omen movies and TV series have struggled to answer that question, while attempting to recapture the appeal of the original movie. In various sequels, prequels, remakes, and spin-offs, the Antichrist child Damien Thorn has grown up and passed on his demonic legacy, but the story always circles back to focus on the unexpected dangers of raising Satan’s offspring. With prequel The First Omen now in theaters, here’s a look at how this chaotic franchise stacks up
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