The Exorcist was more than a movie. It was a cultural phenomenon, changing the course of film history and inspiring a wave of horror movies influenced by Catholic tradition — including, most successfully, The Omen. But although comparisons to William Friedkin’s film are inevitable (this movie probably wouldn’t exist without it), really The Omen is the completion of an arc that began in 1968 with the release of Rosemary’s Baby. Here, the child is not possessed by the Devil. He is the Devil.
The Omen deals with issues of bodily autonomy that are also present in Rosemary’s Baby: At the beginning of the film, wealthy patriarch Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) decides to replace his son — who, as the doctor regretfully tells him, perished “after one breath” — with another child born on the same day at the same hospital. He does so without consulting with, or even informing, his wife Katherine (Lee Remick), allowing her to go through life thinking that little Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens) is her biological child.
