The Good Son Is a Better Damien Story Than The Omen II

The Good Son Is a Better Damien Story Than The Omen II

Let’s dive into the Antichrist story in Damien: The Omen II in 1978 and why The Good Son did it way better 15 years later with Macaulay Culkin.

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The Good Son Is a Better Damien Story Than The Omen II

In The Omen, as much as Damien was a villain due to the Mark of the Beast, he was just a little kid who didn’t really understand his Satanic power. However, come 1978’s Damien: The Omen II, he learned more about his abilities as the Antichrist as a teen, killing out of tantrums in a mostly reactive manner. However, this sequel missed key elements that The Good Son picked up in 1993 to craft a much better Antichrist story.

The Omen II wasn’t bad, but it needed more of Damien truly being decisive and calculating in unlocking his mysterious heritage, which would have allowed him to stamp his authority on the film. This only came in the end when he killed off his cousin and other family members and began to take control of their empire, moving from a military school brat to someone the Devil sent to fool the masses and rule the world.

The Good Son Is a Better Damien Story Than The Omen II

But prior to that, the fatalities came off accidentally or due to shady forces sent by Satan to watch over the boy, which made him less intimidating a threat. Had Damien discovered he had ties to the occult early on, without knowing it was truly Satan, that would have crafted a better supernatural story and made his acceptance of his destiny more organic when the time came for his betrayal of humanity.

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In The Good Son, though, fans got a Damien who didn’t have powers but who still raised hell with his brains and hands. This was Macaulay Culkin’s Henry Evans, a psychopath from the moment he could think for himself. He’d go on to scare his cousin, Mark (Elijah Wood), when the boy moved in after losing his mom, trying to corrupt him to smoke and do nasty deeds.

As it rolled on, The Good Son focused on Mark realizing Henry loved the dark side, fostering an obsession with death. It felt demonic at times due to the haunting score, with Mark even telling the family that Henry was a monster who loved pain and suffering. It was evident from Henry killing animals, throwing a dummy over a bridge to cause a freeway smashup and trying to kill his little sister by drowning her in cracking ice on a rink. Henry was simply fascinated by mortality, with the bombshell dropping that he drowned his brother a while back in the tub, not just for the extra attention, but because he loved playing a God who had control over people’s lives.

This was the kind of cerebral teen Damien should have been: torturing folks, playing mind games and crafting stories of denial and distraction with his forked tongue. It’d have made him more sinister, which is the figure Henry cut, embracing a Prince of Darkness-like role as he also built deadly weapons in an inventions room, plotted to poison his family and tricked his psychiatrist into making Mark look like the guilty kid.

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It was a perfect horror story, with Henry clinical, bloodthirsty and a genius who basked in death. It didn’t need full-blown telekinesis, mind-control or animals as familiars per The Omen because through sly smiles, scary one-liners and dead eyes, Henry let everyone know he was a devil in the flesh. And, ultimately, The Good Son’s smaller cast and character portraits gave Henry a chilling personality, which is what Damien sorely lacked as Satan’s heir in The Omen II.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/good-son-better-damien-story-than-omen-2/

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