Damien - Omen II (R)
AFI Catalog; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Hulu; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This is the first sequel to The Omen. It came out in 1978, but I didn't see it until 2024.

The sequel begins shortly after the first movie. Archaeologist/exorcist Carl Bugenhagen convinces a fellow archaeologist to come look at a recently unearthed wall in some cavernous ruins, which had been painted long ago with images of the Antichrist. He believes the image looks like Damien Thorn (though personally I thought the resemblance was rough enough that it could look like any number of young boys in the world). Anyway, I predicted there would be a cave-in, and there was, so both archaeologists were killed.

The story flashes forward seven years, and Damien is now 12 years old, being raised by Richard Thorn and his second wife, Ann. Richard is the brother of Robert Thorn, from the first movie. Damien and his cousin Mark both attend Davidson Military Academy, where a new troop leader named Sgt. Neff (Lance Henriksen) takes an interest in Damien. He apparently knows Damien is the Antichrist, and is on his side. Another person who seems to be on his side is a guy named Paul Buher, who works at Richard's company and has plans for a new business venture that Richard is skeptical about. I got the impression that Paul also knew Damien was the Antichrist, but as I write this review I don't remember if that was ever made as explicit as it was with Neff. Anyway, lots of people die throughout the movie, whenever they uncover the truth (or anything close to the truth) about Damien.

And I guess I don't want to reveal any more of the plot. I will say when Damien first finds out the truth about himself, he seems to be greatly disturbed by it, but before long he accepts it. And I found it weird how quickly and inexplicably his attitude about it changed. Most of the time he doesn't seem to be the one causing all the deaths; they were probably caused by Satan, or whatever, to protect Damien. There was at least one death he seems responsible for, but he claimed repeatedly that he didn't do it, even though no one was accusing him. So I'm really not sure if he meant to do it or not. Maybe he just regretted it as soon as it was done, because he clearly didn't want to do it. I'll also say that some of the deaths were done in interesting ways, though I've seen much later horror movies that did even better jobs of killing people. Aside from that, I don't know what to say. It's not a terrible movie, but I also didn't think it was particularly good.