'Damien: Omen II' is of course a sequel to the 1976 film 'The Omen', a film that is considered a classic but that I thought was middling. I think this was middling as well, but in some ways, I found it more interesting than its predecessor, in part because the first film has worked its way into the collective consciousness, so I felt like I'd kind of seen it even before I saw it.
This movie follows a young pubescent Damien coming to the realization that he is to be the Anti-Christ, something that he is legitimately upset about at first, but which he comes to embrace. Damien also learns of a conspiracy of people dedicated to helping him, including an instructor at his military school and the number 2 official at his uncle's multi-national conglomerate.
After his parent's deaths in the first movie Damien is taken in by his father's brother. We learn that the Thorne family run a multinational conglomerate, and that while Gregoy Peck was able to use his privileges to have a prominent diplomatic career, his brother William Holden took over the family business. Holden seems a decant enough guy, but when approached by representatives of a 'conspiracy of light' dedicated to stopping Damien, he just refuses to see his nephew's evilness (despite all the people around him that conveniently wind-up dead) until it might be, and in fact is, too late.
Some interesting ideas here, but similar themes are tackled more interestingly in other films from around the same time, such as 'The Fury' (1978) and 'The Visitor' (1979). The movie also fails to take advantage of a plot twist they seemed to be setting up, in which Holden's wife Lee Grant knew that Damien was to be the Anti-Christ the whole time. **
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