The Omen (6/6/1976)
The big setpiece blockbuster take on the devil child success of The Exorcist, where a conspiracy to get the Antichrist into a powerful family to fit a fictional Biblical prophecy involves lots of supernaturally convoluted seemingly-accidental deaths just after people share clues about what’s going on. The cheerful nanny death is the only one that actually seems timely - if anything too early, because if the forces of Hell had been subtler with the home help nobody would have known anything!
The big setpiece deaths, the reveal at the old cemetery (the only traditional “horror” style set in the film) and the generally ominous atmosphere helped by Jerry Goldsmith’s Oscar-winning Ominous Latin score, and Gregory Peck playing to type in a not at all to type story make it a fun revisit.
Among other things, it’s about keeping secrets supposedly for someone else’s good. Robert Thorn (Peck) deceives his wife Katherine (Lee Remick) at the start and she never gets to find out why all these awful things keep happening.
It’s also the only film I can think of where a baboon attack nearly saves the world.
Gameability: Probably suited to a one-shot or miniseries unless the PCs have a shot at defeating the Antichrist before the last three minutes of the third film. (I once ran a Final Destination one-shot, a series all about similarly involved deaths.) A playable sympathetic Antichrist and/or deadly coincidence powers could be fun though!
The Medium: a 25th anniversary DVD (which itself is now 22!) with a commentary from director Richard Donner and editor Stuart Baird, a 45-minute feature on the production, as well as a separate bit of it that talks a little about its cursed reputation due to various coincidences and tragedies - which also didn’t stop it being made or released - that Richard Donner dismisses as pattern recognition because they were making a movie about scary coincidences, and a section with Jerry Goldsmith talking about the score.
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