Arkasha Stevenson’s The First Omen is one of the most riveting horror prequels I’ve ever seen. It’s a rapturous, violent, wickedly subversive slice of religious trauma that successfully injects life into a franchise that’s almost 50 years old. While it’s a shame it failed to make much impact at the box office this weekend, all but guaranteeing it’ll be both the first and last Omen for a while, fans can still check out the rest of the franchise over on Hulu to prep themselves for a second showing of Stevenson’s feature debut. Right now, the entire franchise is available to stream on Hulu, starting, of course, with the 1976 masterpiece, all the way through 1991’s Omen IV: The Awakening and the 2006 remake. Of particular note is 1978’s Damien: Omen II, my favorite sequel in the franchise.
Per Hulu: Damien, the devil’s child of The Omen, is back in this spine-tingling 1978 sequel.
While Don Taylor’s sequel loses some of the nuance and textured character work of the original, there’s still a stacked enough cast to make even the most hooey of antichrist shenanigans really work. Lee Grant and William Holden? Come on.
Omen II, like most horror sequels at the time, opts for more. The deaths are more elaborate, the betrayals are more melodramatic, and the stakes are world-ending consequential. While it can be hard to recommend as a standalone offering, it pairs nicely with the original, expanding the scope while solidifying a path forward for the franchise. At some point, this spawn of Satan is going to end the world.
Maybe it’s exposure while I was young, but I have a soft spot in my heart for what Taylor accomplishes here with Omen II. Damien is more explicitly evil this go-round, using his mind to will all kinds of terrible things, my favorite of which is a gorgeously executed elevator death that remains unmatched to this day.
What do you think? Which of the movies in The Omen franchise is your favorite? Do you plan to check any of them out on Hulu? Let me know over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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