Editorials
Happy Anniversary to ‘The Omen’!
“Look at me, Damien! It’s all for you!”
Today marks the 41st anniversary of Richard Donner’s The Omen, one of the most chilling and wonderfully paced horror films to come out of the 1970s. It also notably produced one of the most terrifying genre villains of all time: Damien Thorn, the pint-size Antichrist portrayed with the right amount of disquieting composure and menace by then five-year-old English actor Harvey Spencer Stephens. (NOTE: For those of you who haven’t ever seen the film, I recommend you skip past this spoilers below and go have a watch!)
If you couldn’t tell from my recent post on Rosemary’s Baby‘s anniversary, I have a thing for well-paced Satanic chillers. The Omen is no exception. Penned by David Seltzer, The Omen tells the story of Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck), an American ambassador to the United Kingdom, and his wife Katherine (Lee Remick), who are at the center of a number of mysterious occurrences and deaths that ultimately seem related to their son, Damien. When Catholic priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton) suggests that perhaps Damien is not quite human, Robert and Keith Jennings (David Warner), a photographer who has been investigating Damien, set off on a mission to uncover the truth about the boy before more lives are lost. Unfortunately, Robert and Keith are not quite successful in their efforts, and The Omen ultimately boasts one of the bleakest endings in horror history. With Damien revealed as the Antichrist, audiences were left with the terrifying notion that evil had truly won for once.
Given that Donner’s film grossed $60.0M on a very modest $2.8M budget, it’s no surprise that Damien’s tale didn’t end there. The film’s first sequel Damien: Omen II was released in 1978 to mixed reviews, but continued box office success, grossing $26.5M, almost four times its budget. Omen III: The Final Conflict hit big screens in three years later and starred Sam Neill as an adult Damien in office, while the franchise made its final bow with the made-for-television Omen IV: The Awakening in 1991. Seltzer notably returned to the world he created as a screenwriter once again in 2006 when he penned the remake of The Omen, which starred Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick.
What I personally love about The Omen is its very poised handle on tension, elevated both by a psychological approach to terror and masterfully executed scenes of violence that don’t rely heavily on gratuitous gore. In addition to the famous nanny-on-the-roof and decapitation scenes, I particularly love the sequence in which Damien, his tricycle, and his pregnant mother collide to make for one of the most jarring and outright unsettling moments of horror in history.
So, horror fans… what are your favorite scenes from The Omen? Do you prefer any of the sequels? Who would win in 1970s Damien Thorn vs. Regan MacNeil showdown? Sound off below!
Found footage movies rely on immersion and a particular kind of suspension of disbelief in order to scare viewers, so it stands to reason that playing along with the “kayfabe” of it all is necessary for these movies to be effective. However, despite being something of a purist when it comes to in-universe recordings, I’ve come to accept that traditional productions can benefit from the occasional injection of found footage thrills.
For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!
For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).
As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.
I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.
Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!
4. Cam (2018)
When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.
While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.
3. Banshee Chapter (2013)
Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!
That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
2. The Deep House (2019)
The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.
Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.
1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.
After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!
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