Damien: The Omen II  ★★★

THE first sequel to The Omen had big shoes to fill so it’s no surprise that it was generally a let-down.

Apart from a couple of moments, Damien: The Omen II is rarely frightening, thus stumbling at the first horror hurdle.

It’s entertaining, yes, in a campy fun kind of way, but it doesn’t have the same constant buildup of tension and isn’t as uniformity well acted as the original film.

William Holden and Lee Grant are fine and the adult supporting cast is ok, but the two teenagers playing Damien and his cousin are frankly poor.

Which is unfortunate because, as the title suggests, for the film to truly succeed we need to empathise and fear the young son of Satan, as we did in the first film when he was a toddler.

I realise it’s harder to make a teenager seem scarier than they already do generally, but the script does neither actor any favours.

Certainly there are some fun set-piece kills, but nothing that rivals the jump shocks of the original film.

The two best scenes in the sequel don’t actually involve any death or gore at all – the look of horror on a journalist when she first sets eyes on Damien, whose face she has previously only seen depicted as the antichrist on an ancient wall relic, and a confrontation between Damien and his history teacher.

One of the great aspects of the first film was the rising sense of foreboding aided by the phenomenal music score.

Here the score is used in too heavy-handed a manner and most of the horrific moments occur in daylight with no opportunity for elements of the scenes to slowly develop.

All that being said, it’s an entertaining watch but not one for the archives.