I'm adopted, and one of the things that worries me from time to time is that despite the perfectly adequate job done by my adoptive parents, I will end up like my biological mother. I'm older now than she was when she had me, and I've never met her. She just kind of looms over me in the background like this figure of dread as I wonder if I make similar choices to her, or if I like some of the things she does. I wonder how similar we are in personality, or if I've ever unknowingly passed her on the street. I wonder if I have walked the same paths that she has, or if she has answers to any of the personal questions that I have about myself that my adoptive parents cannot answer.
I worry because my mother is probably not a good person. Or, at the very least, any goodness that was in her was taken away due to poor circumstance. I worry because I feel that to end up like her, even through no fault of my own, would make me an incredible failure in the eyes of my adoptive parents. I fear that they would resent that they could not love it out of me.
Adoption and horror cinema are definitely not bosom buddies. Horror movies like 'The Ring' (2002) 'Orphan' (2009), and 'Brightburn' (2019) (to give a few examples) will make you think twice about the idea of adopting a kid. But perhaps the most infamous example of a horror movie that exploits adoption as a plot device is Richard Donner's 'The Omen' (1976), which I recently ended up rewatching, along with its sequels, in the hope that I would be able to catch the franchise's newest installment ('The First Omen' (2024)) in cinemas. I didn't quite get the chance but it was nice to do a franchise watch over a number of weeks once again.
Basically, if you haven't seen it, 'The Omen' follows Robert and Katherine Thorn. Robert's a high-profile political figure and he and his wife have been just desperate to have kids. Katherine gives birth to a son, but he dies almost immediately, so this spooky priest convinces Robert to adopt an infant boy born on the same day whose mother passed away during childbirth, and pass the baby off to his wife as their own. Being the world's greatest husband, Robert agrees, and he and Katherine name the kid Damien.
The long and short of it is that Damien turns out to be the antichrist. It's the '70s and people raise their eyebrows and gasp when you tell them you plan to adopt kids because "Christ, Barbara, have you not seen 'The Omen'? That could be you, girl." Not that being referenced on 'Only Fools and Horses' is the peak proof of something's cultural longevity and impact, but there's that fucking stupid-ass bit where Rodney seems to think Raquelle and Del's son will be evil simply because he's NAMED Damien (and 'O Fortuna' plays when Rodney meets Damien for the first time, classic).
When Robert Thorn makes the incredibly rash decision to adopt Damien (and I'll come back to this later), he knows next to nothing about Damien's family history or parentage. 'The Omen' posits that children who are unknowns, who come with little available information about their family (including foundlings, runaways, or orphans), are always dangerous because of the risk that they may come with that little satanic something extra. If you don't know the kid' background, assume the worst. In the case of Damien, it literally IS the worst, but in real life, the 'worst' is often an imagined criminal background- deviant traits that the child could have possibly inherited.
In 'The Omen', Damien is evil simply because he's fated to be so. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I truly believe that no child is born evil. Controversial, I know. I've taught kids. I've met annoying kids, mean kids, violent kids, and rude kids, but none of them were evil. I don't even really think any of their parents were evil. Not as parents, anyway. As customers, yeah, some of them were definitely evil... I'll also make the bold statement here that I don't believe that there is any such thing as the 'serial killer genes' (and as a sidenote, people rag on 'Riverdale' a lot for this plot element, but when Betty is told she has the 'serial killer genes', she's being told this by a manipulative pseudo-scientific cult leader who wants her to join his healing family and is praying on the insecurity that she's similar to her serial killer dad, so, like, it makes sense in context). Children do not have a genetic predisposition to turn out demonic, unless, of course, they are Damien. See, Robert and Katherine love Damien a lot (at least in the beginning). They kind of dote on him. But when Robert begins to uncover bits a pieces of Damien's background, and is told of a prophecy that implies Damien to be the antichrist, any love he has for his son flies out the window. There's very little 'not-my-son' type pushback from Robert. There's no attempt, from him, to love Damien into shape. Damien is prophesized to become the antichrist, so Robert considers any of his own attempts at good parenting to be futile. The film heavily emphasises the idea of nature over nurture and wholly dismisses the key role that environmental factors play in a child's development. It completely ignores the literally life-changing impact adoption can have on a child. And so I (miserable) think about an alternate universe version of 'The Omen' where Robert ignores the prophecy, and where he and Katherine raise Damien with all the love and care they can muster. Maybe he doesn't turn out evil.
Is Damien evil? Well, director Richard Donner wanted to make this aspect of the film as ambiguous as possible. That's why all of the deaths in the movie are 'Final Destination'-type accidents. The events of the film could just be a string of coincidences that lend themselves to the paranoid demonic fantasy that Robert eventually succumbs to. If we go through the film's spookiest moments one by one, we find that there's very little concrete evidence for Damien even being the antichrist. Let's do that, actually. That sounds fun.
The first major thing is that Damien's nanny (implied to be hypnotised by a menacing hellhound that has turned up at the Thorn property) hangs herself at Damien's fifth birthday party. Tragic, yes, but not inherently supernatural. The 'hellhound' is this big, beefy rottweiler that hangs about before it is eventually adopted by Damien's replacement nanny, the spooky Mrs. Baylock. Stray dogs are also not supernatural. Hell, they're not even that uncommon. Mrs. Baylock… well, she's a nutter. She buys into the whole Damien-is-the-antichrist theory, and seems intent on grooming him to be evil, but just because SHE believes it doesn't make it the truth (side note: I don't remember too much about Mrs. Baylock in the original version of the film, but Mia Farrow as Mrs. Baylock in the 2006 remake is the best part of the film. She's genuinely entertaining).
The next spooky thing is that when Katherine takes Damien to a safari park, all of the animals go nuts at his presence. Again, despite the film's implication that they can sense Damien's evil aura, if we're looking at this realistically, there's any number of reasons why this might have happened. Maybe they were hungry. Maybe they hate all posh people in general. Who knows. Damien also freaks out and refuses to enter a church when Robert and Katherine try to take him to attend a ceremony (a friend's wedding, I think). Poor mite. If I was made to sit through a church service at that age, I might have gotten a bit tetchy as well.
A priest, Father Brennan, is the one who eventually spills the beans to Robert about his son's demonic nature. Father Brennan could easily be crazy, much like Mrs. Baylock. Around this time, Katherine becomes intensely stressed around Damien. She is very easily annoyed by him, and her shrink tells Robert that Katherine is having paranoid delusions that Damien is not really her child (she's right, of course- naughty Robert- but this could also happen in the real world. Paranoid delusions aren't proof of the supernatural). This is what spurs Robert on to dig deeper into Damien's background, because with the tension fraught at home, Katherine is pregnant and does not want to have the child for fear that it will turn out like Damien. Robert, typical '70s gent, would rather go to Rome and meet a bunch of other people who believe in the antichrist than let his clearly mentally unwell wife get the abortion that she wants.
Mrs. Baylock plays a game where she spins Damien round and round and round until he gets dizzy as all hell, and then sets him loose riding his trike around the house. Damien bashes into Katherine, who falls over a banister and loses the baby. Job's a good'un. The prophecy stated that Damien would do anything to stop another child from being born to Katherine and Robert, but was Katherine's fall Damien's fault? Well, no, clearly not. It was Mrs. Baylock's, and this is hammered home when it's Mrs. Baylock, rather than Damien (a literal five-year-old) who goes to the hospital and finishes Katherine off. Yes, Damien watched his mother fall over the banister, but again, he's five. What could he have done?
The last piece of the puzzle is Robert being gifted a bunch of ceremonial knives and being told that if his son really is the antichrist, then he'll have a birthmark in the shape of three sixes. Robert finds this birthmark on Damien. Ok- true, that's unusual, but show me someone who has perfect, unblemished skin. It's enough proof for Robert, who is also probably mad with grief at this point considering his wife just died. He takes Damien to a church and attempts to stab him. One of Damien's only lines in the film is him begging his father not to hurt him. I'm not gonna lie, that kind of sucks to watch. Made me cry a little bit. Robert is shot by the police before he can actually kill Damien, though.
So, we've got a child who everyone BELIEVES is the devil, but who shows no supernatural powers or even evil intent. A kid with a weird-shaped birthmark. In fact, the only thing Damien is shown as definitively guilty of in the film is being coded as autistic. Damien is sort of withdrawn. He doesn't talk much or show any big emotions. When the other kids around him at his fifth birthday party are screaming at the sight of the nanny who has hung herself, he's just kind of blank-faced. He has meltdowns in unfamiliar environments (as seen with the church episode), and can't seem to understand emotion in other people (there's a scene where Katherine is clearly upset at Damien making loud, repetitive noises, and it doesn't really register to him that he's annoying her, so he continues to do it). So even Damien's attitude, though unusual for a five-year-old, isn't quote-unquote scary. Or maybe it was to parents in the '70s. What if my child turns out odd? What if my child has a neurodevelopmental disorder? Are we scared that we'll adopt a kid that turns out to be the antichrist, or that we'll adopt one that's autistic?
Circling back to Robert Thorn's rash decision. Another way the film demonises adoption is by having the process shrouded in secrecy, and synonymous with lying. Robert adopts Damien simply because a creepy priest shows up and basically gives Damien away. Robert doesn't tell Katherine that Damien is adopted (which ostensibly is what causes Katherine's mental illness later on in the film- deception by the people around her, not Damien being the devil). Do you know how long it takes to adopt a kid? Do you know the amount of paperwork you have to go through? The background checks? Contrary to what the film suggests, adoption is not some portal into the unknown. Contemporary adoption (and I'd say even adoption in the '70s, like, come one man) prioritizes transparency, openness, and honesty between all parties involved. There's a big thing in adoption services about children's rights to know their origins, and adoptive parents being fully informed so that they can be prepared for the responsibilities of parenthood. Yes, this means that if it's likely that a child will have a neurodevelopmental disorder or any other disabilities, or even if they come from a troubling family background with a history of say, criminality or addiction, the prospective adoptive parents will be told so that they can consider whether they are suitable for the role. The priest from 'The Omen' will NOT just come up to you and hand you a baby boy, no questions asked. I know, I was disappointed when I found this out too.
So, there you go. TL:DR: 'The Omen' gets most of its scary staying power by mystifying the adoption process and demonizing the unknown. This being said, is it a good film? Yeah, obviously. I'm a horror fan before anything else, so even if it makes something that saved my life look like a cause of death, I can still rate it favourably. I find modern examples of the 'adoption-as-horror-vehicle' trope much more offensive (the aforementioned 'Brightburn', which I also can't forgive simply because it's a dogshit film). Hell, 'The Omen' is even more palatable to me than 'The Royal Tenenbaums'. Besides, 'Damien – Omen II' has Damien finding out about his demonic parental origins, and coming to terms with it. Bless the little sprog, having to deal with all that at twelve years old while I, a decade older, am still indecisive about what troubling implications my biological background might have. Oh! And 'Omen III: The Final Conflict' has Sam Neill as an adult Damien getting freaky with a life-size wooden effigy of Jesus Christ. Like I said, a lot to love about this franchise. Looking forward to watching 'The First Omen' whenever I can. Looking forward to meeting my biological mother maybe never.