IT MUST BE AN OMEN

For myself, i am not to fond of the Horror genre. I have never been one to want to intentionally become scared or frightened to build up my adrenaline. With that being said, I did watch The Omen, namely because it was a very old movie. This did, in my opinion, set it apart from some of the other Horror movies that were on the list.

The movie did a good job in representing a real world setting that any person could be a part of, which drew myself and possibly other viewers in. The entire movie is surrounded around Damion, the son of the Prime Minister of the United States who lives in Britian now, while also being the son of the Devil. Many movies will play on this idea that the son of the devil is a child who goes around killing and killing and killing. It was not his doing that the people died, but the work of his guardians, or demons. For being a movie that took place back in the 1960s, there was not the amount of special effects that could have been done to amp up the movie like there are now. What the director did very well in my opinion was set the mood.

What i did like about this horror movie was the simplicity of it. The very first horror movies were not about how gruesome or Devilish the creatures could look, but the "What if". If there is the idea that this could happen and may be happening to one of us, it scares the hell out of you. (Not pun intended)

Most all Horror movies have a general theme to theme that runs through them. Generally they are scary, hence the Horror Theme. But what a director can do that really sets the movie off is uses the sense of the viewer against himself. For the Omen, the music was constantly telling of a bad action that was about to happen that kept you wondering. The score had no sound so that it would not draw away from the attention given to the fear about the occur. Along with this, the pause of action builds suspense for Terror/Thriller movies, along with the cinematography that makes the viewer question hi/her own senses.

What i did enjoy about this movie which is an interesting point that i brought up a week or two back in class, is that Damion, the anti-Christ or antagonist of the movie, actually wins.  Not many movies will end with the bad guy coming out victories because it does not sit well with the audience. I really did respect the director for doing that since Damion did have way more power than anyone in the movie.

Staying Far Away from the Woods

Horror and Fear are part of the genres most popular in today's movie industry. Movies like Sinister, Annabelle, The Conjuring, The Green Inferno, Paranormal Activity, The Omen, The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project and the list goes on and on. Naturally if any of these situations being portrayed in film happened to the person watching it, it wouldn't be entertaining at all (for the victim(s)). Yet, day after day people are indulging themselves into these films of blood, death, and fear. There are a plethora of theories on why viewers watch these, but the main point that really relates to why I enjoy them is because of my attraction of power.  In The Omen, the powerful Antichrist child Damien, is the main power and fear source of the movie. His own adoptive father is so fearful of him he going on a hunt to figure out what is going on with his son.  Or in The Blair Witch Project, where there is legend of this old crazy witch that haunts the woods that these young people go to research and film a quick documentary in. Assumably at the end of the film, all three have met their demise at the hands of this powerful unknown beast.  They go without food for days, constantly trying to find their way out of the woods but always seeming to end up at the same night before.
These two movies the whole time have the viewers so captivated and wanting to see what terrible occurrence is going to happen next. As this is happening, viewers are eagerly awaiting the next suspenseful moment to be answered.  Knowing death and/or pain is lurking right around the corner for these characters. When these moments finally occur,  we as viewers become almost sympathetic for some, and wanting something terrible to happen to another.  For example, in Blair Witch Project, personally I became sympathetic for Mike, who just wanted to do the minimum to get the documentary completed and get out of the woods. Yet Heather was the person I didn't sympathize with because her confidence was her downfall.
A factor of fear embodied in Blair Witch Project, as they both lose their sanity, bringing them closer, knowing the fear that loiters in the nighttime. Their "sticking together for survival" was the factor that helped them last longer but yet it also aided to their demise. This applies to the Paradox of Fear because it enticed our pleasure, for the reason that you can sense that their end is near.  As well in The Omen, after Robert grabs Damien and brings him to the church, you can sense the end is near for Robert because he is battling with Satan Jr.
We are a world filled with strong believers in "oh that won't happen to me" and the high level of love for these horror and fear movies in the world really proves that.

You and Me and The Devil Makes Three

In Alfred Hitchcock's films, he tried to get something that was quaint, nice, or benevolent to seem menacing. Which explains why motels or flocks of birds give us the creeps. But in Richard Donner's The Omen we don't just see something neutral being turned evil. Billions of people see churches, the Bible, and sacraments as welcoming, if not just nostalgic. So there is far more damage done when suddenly there is a horror film based on what you hold incredibly dear. This movie, if taken as fact, would immediately put intense suspicion upon your closely held beliefs and even your own children.

In Noel Carrol's Philosophy of Horror, he persists that to be a monster, it must be both threatening and impure. Threatening to life, limb, mind, and/or morality. It must be trying to destroy some part of the main character in order to bring forth revulsion. The boy in The Omen, along with his guardian maids and dogs, have this quality. On a  deeper level however, it must be what Carrol calls "impure". This is a combination "between two or more conflicting cultural categories," he says. One way to combine conflicting categories is fusion, a physical blending of entities into one spatially limited frame, like Swamp-Man, Frankenstein's monster, or zombies (blending living and dead). He says that possessed monsters are fusion because of their being a blend of personality and body, but each belonging to different persons. So the mind belongs to a demon but the body belongs to a girl.

Though not an exorcism story, The Omen takes advantage of opposed forces in the same way. The boy, usually innocent, pure, and harmless is born with the personality of the devil himself. The monster is not a fusion inside the movie narrative, but to the viewer, the contradiction is blatant. As mentioned before, there is the added element religion into the fusion. The little boy could have merely been an evil alien and the story only affect how one may see their child, but because the film's central themes are of religion and churches and scriptural text, the once familiar entities now have a dark shadow cast across them. How could these beliefs and this little child produce something so reviling? So there is actually a fusion of three, the boy, the church, and the devil, making, I presume on purpose, a sick, unholy trinity of heebie jeebies.