The Devil Delusion

This chapter argues that the paranoia-driven nature of The Omen is much more ambiguous than has been hitherto acknowledged, especially as it pivots on the construction of the changeling child Damien Thorn. While the majority of critics (and viewers) took it as a given that Damien is the son of the Devil and must be ritually slain, Richard Donner’s intention was much more subtle: to make ‘two pictures’ with opposing interpretations, in which the supernatural reality coexists with an alternative, that is, rational explanation. As per his vision, Donner instructed writer David Seltzer to remove all references in the script to devil-gods, cloven-hoofed beasts, and the like. To help illumine our understanding of the ambiguous nature of The Omen ’s narrative, it is helpful to turn to Tzvetan Todorov’s formalist/structuralist approach to ‘the fantastic’ as a literary genre, which centres around the reader’s hesitation between the ‘uncanny’ (supernatural explained) and the ‘marvellous’ (supernatural accepted). Henry James’s 1898 psychological-cum-ghost story The Turn of the Screw is a prime example of ‘the fantastic’ as Todorov defines it, and The Omen may be seen as Jamesian in effect, if not in intention.