Starting one week after the finale of the first Omen, the guy from that movie that I didn’t mention once in my review meets up with some archaeologist. Damien has been put into the custody of his “father’s” brother’s family, even though the ending of the film implied the president would be taking him in. The guy has a whole chest full of evidence of Damien being the antichrist, and a letter explaining things. Since the archaeologist isn’t religious and has such a good reputation, only he can be trusted to convince Damien’s uncle that he’s the antichrist. The guy shows the archaeologist a mural of the antichrist that very much resembles Damien, and then the ruins cave in, burying them alive.

Seven years later, Damien and his cousin are off to a military academy after they say goodbye to their cousin-aunt. They call her both cousin and aunt, I think she’s Damien’s uncle’s father’s sister. She threatens to cut off funding Uncle’s businesses if he doesn’t pull Damien out of the military academy and start separating him from his cousin. He gives her the creeps. Uncle is offended by this and is like “we don’t need your money anyway!” Uncle’s aunt dies by raven-induced heart attack that night. Which seems like overkill since nobody was listening to her anyway, but I guess the devil isn’t known for being super fair.

At the military academy, they’ve got a new… uh… I don’t remember. Sort of like their vice principal but for military. Honestly this movie had so many moving pieces in it but was so boring I can’t even explain everything. We find out after like an hour and a half that the guy actually knows Damien is the antichrist, and tells him as much, and we get no explanation as to who this guy is, how he knows that, and we never see him again.

The academy takes a field trip to a plant owned by Damien’s uncle’s firm, where they’re working on… something. I think it was some kind of nutritious soil. A satan-induced explosion occurs, killing two workers and making everyone else sick, except Damien who’s totally fine. Everyone gets checked out at the hospital, where the doctor – played by the guy who played Anthony on Designing Women – finds his blood cells or dna or whatever is weirdly similar to that of a jackal. Apparently he’s an expert in jackal dna.

One of the employees of the museum that Damien’s uncle’s firm also owns receives the chest that the guy from the first scene wanted Damien’s uncle to have. Employee is really shaken by the evidence inside the chest, and goes to show the uncle, who of course finds it preposterous at first. But eventually he’s like “oh Damien really is the devil’s son” because he finds Damien’s 666 birthmark.

And everyone dies. Again.

I left out a lot but this movie was a snooze. Part of it just felt like a rehash of the first movie – some random crazy person tells Damien’s father figure that Damien is the antichrist, Damien’s father figure dismisses this as crazy nonsense, the person dies, rinse and repeat, until Damien’s father figure is finally convinced and tries to kill Damien, only to get killed himself.

But there was stuff in this movie that could’ve actually been interesting in different. Like the military school guy who is aware that Damien is the antichrist. Or the out of nowhere plot twist that Damien’s aunt is a Satanist and fully supports him being the antichrist. Literally no foreshadowing of this at all and then she gets killed a second after revealing this information for no apparent reason.

After being told he’s the antichrist, Damien is appalled and runs off denying it, but then is just… fine with it afterwards? No buildup, no explanation for why he’s cool with it. Just, like, a 12 year old orphan finding out he’s the son of the devil seems like it could’ve been a film on its own.

The practical effects were still not great in this movie. Not awful, but not the best.

But man it is VERY PRETTY. The whole film has a lot of really nice shots in it. I saw some review said it’s a stylishly shot film and I fully agree. It’s darn nice-looking. The acting remained as good as the first film as well. The actors playing Damien and his cousin had very little experience and both delivered believable performances. They also both stopped acting really soon after this, and the guy who played the cousin went into advertising.

And what’s more satanic than ads?!

Just kidding, maybe.

All in all I think I’ll have to give it to Roger Ebert, whose opinion was basically “this movie is worse than the previous one because teenagers who are satanists aren’t as interesting.”

At this point I have to wonder, is the prequel the only actually scary movie in this franchise? I know I’m only two movies in. While the first one did have some moments of tensity, the sequel was just kind of there.

Random note: One of the actors in this movie looks and sounds almost identical to Robert Reed, who played Mike on The Brady Bunch. It’s really weird.

Random note 2: I’m suddenly wondering if I’ve been spelling Damien wrong this whole time. Not enough to look it up, clearly.