Recommendations of the Editorial team
Rolling Stone presents: The most overestimated films ever. In our series we present works that are good, but not as good as most critics find (“Fitzcarraldaldo”); Works that are less clever than expected (“Blade Runner”); As well as works that just hurt (“True Romance”, which of course only someone like Tony Scott could turn). Part one:
The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)
“The Omen”, together with the “The Exorcist”, which came to cinemas three years earlier, is described as one of the great horror master works of the 1970s. Impressed by the hippie era, in which young people are increasingly emancipating themselves from their parents, the offspring in films were increasingly presented as a threat. Just like the 5-year-old Damien Thorn (played by Harvey Spencer Stephens), who embodies the devil’s son. Papa Beelzebub naturally gave the boy a tatoo on the back of the head (“666”). The film works like most of director Richard Donner, as well as “Lethal Weapon”: as a loose string of action scenes. There is only one drive here: the protagonists should die as imaginative and bloody as possible.
Many figures collect in the “Omen”, the little Satan, the nothing -of -sensing parents, the nanny … At some point you only wonder how well who goes on it. A priest, for example, is crowded onto the floor by a falling lightning rod, a photographer using a glass pane that slips from a truck. A leading actor Gregory Peck is most sorry for a leading actor. The then 60-year-old was lured into production with the promise that horror films were the next big thing. As if lobotomized, it runs through the area, with a frozen facial expressions, in a subject that does not suit him.
