Ranking Every ‘The Omen’ Movie

It’s been 50 years since the release of The Omen, one of the best horror films of the 1970s, and despite being a quite simple, focused film it spawned a franchise now totalling six movies. Consisting of sequels, a prequel, a TV movie, and a remake, I thought I’d celebrate the 50^th anniversary by watching and ranking the entire series.

(It has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with the fact that I recently played horror movie Trivial Pursuit on a podcast and got a very basic question about The Omen wrong. This is certainly not an overcorrection to get caught up on the series to make sure a mistake like that never ever ever happens again)

6) Omen IV: The Awakening (1991)

When the director of Halloween 5 quits halfway through production because he thinks the film sucks then you know the film is indeed going to suck. A cheap, flat TV movie, Omen IV tries to revive the franchise but instead desecrates the corpse. It starts off so bad that it’s almost fun to watch but it quickly becomes incredibly dull. It looks and feels like early nineties TV in the worst way, no visual flair or acting talent to be found, a long way from Twin Peaks or The X-Files. It’s essentially a remake of the original with the novelty being that this time the antichrist is a girl, Delia. The horror!

I tried to find things to like but it was an unsuccessful venture. The film does focus on the mother’s suspicions of her child rather than the father’s, the first film in the series to do this, but ultimately the beats are the same. Is it about a child rejecting the religion forced on to them by their parents? Maybe for about 20 seconds. Is it about Delia being jealous of her younger brother? For a scene maybe and then the final twist ruins this by revealing he is the true antichrist and she, the antagonist of the movie, matters little. The one novel aspect of the film wiped away.

It’s an incredibly poorly put together film, laughably so at points. Most scenes are about thirty seconds, pieced together like a montage. I thought it was going to be set during an election, Delia’s father running for governor and she using her demonic influence to help him win, but no, the next scene we’ve jumped forward a few months and he’s already won. There are very few elaborate kills; the first two are simple heart attacks. Gone is the religious horror, replaced by very nineties New Age mysticism, with Delia facing off against crystals at a psychic fair, all scored with insufferably busy music by Jonathan Sheffer who seems to think he’s writing music for a comedy rather than horror. Michael Lerner as a PI is the only highlight but even he can’t save a total disaster.  

5) The Omen (2006)

The remake exists purely to meet a release date. Somebody had the bright idea to release an Omen film on 6/6/6, which, sure, is fun, but the issue is that the idea stopped there. There’s no other concept at all, no purpose, and the film is a remake on the most cynical terms. Shots, lines, and scenes are recreated verbatim and the only additions are both small and silly. Alongside the very 2006 ugly colour grading which makes Israel look just as grey as England, director John Moore uses red to indicate death, with bright red objects highlighted in every scene. Wow, genius.

The new opening scene suggests that 9/11, the Columbia disaster, and Hurricane Katrina are markers for the antichrist’s birth. It’s all very US-focused, which is another issue. Gone is all the subtext from the original about foreigners in the UK. In some stunt casting, Mia Farrow plays Mrs. Baylock, now an American too for some reason, and she’s terrible in the film. Better are David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, and Michael Gambon but they are too similar to the original performances. Thewlis is essentially a younger David Warner but why recreate the character so closely when Warner already nailed it? The film is afraid to go in new directions.

Young Damien loses all ambiguity in this version, giving evil looks and creepily whispering. If he was your child you’d probably want to throw him out a window even if he wasn’t the antichrist. There’s nothing separating this from any of the other ‘creepy kid’ horror films. Julia Stiles is desperately trying her best while Liev Schreiber sleepwalks his way through proceedings. But despite my complaints it’s not outright terrible, it’s largely competent, but it is totally useless as an inferior, uninspired remake.

4) Damien: Omen II (1978)

There’s so much potential within Omen II, a film that never quite come together. Namely, the title is Damien and after being essentially a baby Macguffin in the first film the sequel makes him an actual character. That’s the film’s biggest strength, letting us get to know this conflicted child, an outsider even if you discount his hellish nature, and there are a couple of strong scenes, but even so it doesn’t go far enough. It’s not as insightful a character study as I hoped and once Damien does commit to evil he could have gone the other way and I would have believed it equally.

Ignoring the implied ending of the first film, Damien is not adopted by the president but rather his father’s brother. It’s a plot which adheres too closely to the original, the key conflict recreated with a new adoptive family. The connections to the first film are too contrived and repetitive. We get a new Thorn father figure contacted by a new British journalist, and he just so happens to be an amateur archaeologist interested in the same dig site from the first film.

The new aspects are good but the franchise is already too interested in recycling beats. Even the deaths are pale imitations, other than one good kill in an elevator. There’s a swathe of unconnected ideas, like a military academy, Thorn Industries controlling famine by using a pesticide that acts like a nerve agent, family drama, inner strife with Damien, but they are all too scattered, barely connecting and when they do it’s through unbelievable coincidences and twists. There are solid ideas that never come together, remaining loose threads, dangling, and so while the film is periodically good it’s ultimately a great big mess.

3) The First Omen (2024)

The First Omen is a great film but it’s only an okay Omen film. In terms of quality I would have ranked it in the number 2 position but this isn’t a ranking of quality films, it’s a ranking specifically of Omen films. It is very well put together, gorgeously shot with great performances. It clearly very much wants to be Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria, echoing that film in multiple ways, including the political backdrop and a similar twist surrounding the lead character, which is no bad thing because I love that film.

As the original The Omen purposefully feels like an American film in the UK, The First Omen feels like an American film in Italy in a meta way, the lead character out of place just like the production. It embraces its Rome location brilliantly and is clearly inspired by Italian horror of the era in which it is set, like Argento’s Suspiria and Phenomena, and wider influences such as Possession and Rosemary’s Baby. It’s a strong religious horror film, far better than Immaculate, which released around the same time. There’s one fantastic jump scare (followed by a few cheap ones) and some genuinely unsettling moments.

The third act crumbles for me because I do not like the new lore. Damien is a twin and his mother isn’t a jackal but a nun who survives. He’s born of generations of demonic incest, the father being a jackal demon thing. Why Damien is so special when the cult is already hanging around with a literal demon I don’t know. And the reveal the whole plot is a catholic false flag operation to bring about the antichrist so people start believing in God again is silly. I don’t like the recreation of the hanging scene from the original (now with added fire!) and Ralph Ineson is great but there’s no way he’s the same guy as Patrick Troughton. Then the final scene is outright terrible, an unearned ending which feels like an MCU post credits tease. It’s such a shame: I would love this film if it wasn’t connected to The Omen.

2) Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981)

The Final Conflict is a strange beast. It may not always work, it actually may rarely work, but I appreciate its ambition. It’s a film which delivers on the promise of the original, catching up with a 33-year-old Damien, in full knowledge he is the antichrist, condemning the world through both politics and big business. It reminded me of Ira Levin’s sequel to Rosemary’s Baby, Son of Rosemary, but more successful. It pays off Damien being pure evil, commanding his army of followers and devilishly monologuing to a statue of Christ in one of the best scenes, with Sam Neill taking on the role. There’s even a baby killing montage. It’s Damien unleashed in a way up to this point the franchise only implied.

There is the strange choice of setting it in 1982, which only makes sense if you pretend the first two films were supposed to be set in the 1950s rather than the 70s (which they definitely weren’t) but if you push past that the movie is a fun inversion of the first two films rather than just another following the formula. Damien is now protagonist and the roles have reversed: the second coming of Christ has been born and Damien must find and kill the child, all while avoiding seven assassin priests coming to kill him. Come on, that sounds like a good time. And it is. It’s very silly, it’s a little overlong and messy, the ending somewhat anticlimactic, but it’s a film willing to take risks and make bold choices. It’s easily the most interesting sequel in the series and therefore, in my mind, the best.

1) The Omen (1976)

No surprises here, the original is the best. What’s there to say about it that hasn’t been said over the last 50 years? What makes it work so well is that it is a very accomplished drama as well as a horror. It can easily be read as a metaphor, the supernatural aspects never becoming completely overt. It’s about the fears of parenthood and adoption, the nature vs nurture of raising a child that isn’t biologically yours. It just takes it to the extreme by making it Satan’s child. The conflict about hiding the adoption from the mother also elevates the drama of the film, making it just as fascinating in its smaller moments as it during the horror and ornate death sequences, which are executed brilliantly. David Warner’s spinning decapitated head is an all time great horror image.

Gregory Peck’s character Robert Thorn’s conflict is also born from the idea of raising a child abroad, he an American raising a son who is essentially British. The subtext really shined through on my recent rewatch, one of many layers through which the film works. The characters are strangers in a strange land, Americans in England, and so is the production. That disconnect is fascinating to see. The film is a mixture of accomplished 70s US drama and UK horror, without the pretensions of the former or total schlock of the latter. It’s a nice balance of elevated serious horror and some classic Hammer-style elements. It might be ambiguous with its supernatural nature but never ashamed of it. What other film can pair Gregory Peck at his dramatic best and a wild Patrick Troughton chewing the scenery?

Watching in 2026, it’s hard to imagine the cultural impact of the film when it was released. It brought the antichrist and 666 into the common lexicon and it still holds up today as a great film. Simple, focused, but with great depth and an absolute killer soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith. Damien is barely in it and it works as a religious horror and drama surrounding him rather than getting too caught up in the wider conspiracy or the actual plan for world domination. It’s a film about a terrifying idea.