Goddamn, that decapitation was pretty spectacular.

fucking child, i would beat the shit out of him.

There's more to The Omen than I remembered. On the surface, it's one of those horror movies that trades on dispassionate kids being creepy. And obviously, it banks on the 1970s interest in the occult, with its da Vinci Code-like investigation of the Antichrist myth across Europe. But watching it again, I was taken by the subtext. This is about post-partem, isn't it? Though it's literal in this case, the mother comes to believe her child is evil and indeed, NOT her child. And though not exactly the poster child for adoption, Damien comes to be the rejected child who finds comfort in the arms of a nanny. That he's also at the center of a war between Heaven and Hell (in which Pat Troughton is a soldier, always fun to see a former Doctor as a doomsayer) is almost besides the point. The Omen also has great atmosphere and every death scene is memorably staged by director Richard Donner (Superman, this isn't). An iconic supernatural detective story with thrilling horror moments peppered throughout.