New York Times
"...Fun to watch and sometimes very stylish looking....A cast of good actors..." 06/09/1978 p.C6DVD Verdict 9 of 10
Damien: Omen II starts off with him not aware of his destiny, but it rushes at him like an unholy freight train. William Holden (The Bridge on the River Kwai) and Lee Grant (Shampoo) play his adoptive parents (apparently Holden is Damien's uncle), while Lucas Donat turns in a heartbreaking performance as their son Mark. The action takes us to a bizarre military school led by Lance Henriksen of the Alien franchise who reveals Damien's true purpose to the boy...Damien: Omen II lacks the element of surprise, but still makes for an entertaining sequel with a unique struggle inside Damien. Seeing Damien fight with his destiny is a neat idea for a second chapter, and the thrills are inventive. Of particular note is an under-ice sequence that is horrifying for its creativity. Unfortunately, cool ideas such as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Whore of Babylon turned human get short shrift, and it seems the film only exists to knock people out of the way with ravens, elevators, and knives...Damien: Omen II plays fast and loose with the Bible as well. Damien reads aloud from Revelation 13 but what he reads is actually cobbled together from separate sections of the Bible...He must have one of those "easy read" Bibles that conveniently gives only scripture related to the end of the world. - Brett Cullum
DVD Times 6 of 10
As soon as 20th Century Fox executives saw a rough cut of The Omen, they decided that they would make two sequels, with Damien first as a teenager and finally as an adult. Damien is the first sequel. It was a troubled production, with the original director Mike Hodges leaving (he retains a screenplay credit) and Don Taylor taking over. The film has a nice subversive idea at its centre (the Antichrist going to military academy) but is a bland shadow of its predecessor. It's fashionable to knock The Omen as a glossy, bourgeois horror film, but at least it's well made and has some genuinely tense and atmospheric scenes...Leo McKern, uncredited again, is the only returning castmember from the first film, in a prologue set in Israel. William Holden, in his only horror film and only a few years away from his death, is clearly not in wonderful health but does his best with the lines he's given. The rest of quite an impressive cast of veterans aren't given a lot to do. Jonathan Scott-Taylor can't do a great deal with an underwritten role...Filmed on a (then) healthy budget of $4 million, Damien certainly looks good, with nice Scope photography from Bill Butler (Gilbert Taylor returned to shoot the Israeli prologue) and Jerry Goldsmith's score is as always a plus. Damien: Omen II is certainly worth a look, but is ultimately forgettable. - Gary Couzens
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