Oh Man
It's been 7 years since his parents died and Damien (Jonathan Scott-Taylor) is now living in America with his uncle Richard (William Holden), aunt Ann (Lee Grant) and his cousin Mark (Lucas Donat) who he attends military school with. But some thing is happening as people around Damien start to die with his interfering Aunt Marion (Sylvia Sidney) who wishes for Damien to be separated from his cousin being the first to bite the dust. Slowly Damien comes to understand he isn't normal and has powers which he wants more of.
In my review of "The Omen" I focused on the atmosphere because the atmosphere of that first movie is what made it such a great horror movie. Sadly with director Richard Donner busy with "Superman" he was replaced and sadly Donner's grip on delivering atmosphere went with him. As such instead of being a tense experience "Damien: Omen II" ends up a boring meander through a storyline spiced up by a death every so often and unfortunately even those deaths don't always succeed in delivering the sense of excitement or dread.
The trouble with "Damien: Omen II" is that after a brief scene which sees Leo McKern return and fear that Damien is the antichrist what follows is dull. From scenes of Richard Thorn talking fertilizer to Sergeant Neff talking to Damien there is nothing really driving the story forwards especially during the first half of the movie. It makes it even more of a movie which is nothing followed by a death followed by more nothing whilst we wait for the next death scene and hope it is better than the last one.
What this all boils down to is that "Damien: Omen II" is a weak follow up to the first movie and genuinely feels like a movie which didn't have a central storyline or at least one which would last feature film length. But it also lacks the atmosphere which the first movie had which almost makes this a movie of just waiting for the death scenes to come in the hope that they will be horrific.
