Damien: Series Premiere Review

The Beast has grown up.

The Omen has now become the latest in a long line of venerable horror franchises (Psycho, Scream, The Evil Dead) to find new life on the small screen. Damien also taps into the recent craze of releasing sequels to classic films decades down the line. This new series picks up roughly 25 years after the events of the original 1976 film (wisely pretending the various sequels never happened) and explores what happens when the Antichrist comes of age in the modern world. It’s not a bad premise, though the show never really seems sure of its own identity in this pilot episode.

Damien is the brainchild of Glenn Mazzara, who was a writer on The Shield and served as showrunner for The Walking Dead in that tumultuous post-Frank Darabont period. If Mazzara wasn’t necessarily the driving force behind those projects, at least he still brings an impressive resume to the table. There’s a definite competence and even a certain sense of cinematic style to this episode. It helps that Elizabeth director Shekhar Kapur was tapped to direct the pilot. Kapur has a love for high camera angles and unusual framing choices that help create a sense of sweeping drama.

The series has just as many generic and melodramatic qualities working against it, though. For one thing, the pilot starts off in media res with the now 30-year-old Damien Thorn (played by Merlin’s Bradley James) stumbling into a church in search of answers before the plot shifts back a few days. That flash-forward approach is ridiculously overplayed by now and doesn’t do much to start the show off on the right foot. The heavy-handed score (full of obligatory Gregorian chanting) only heightens the sense of melodrama. The show is also burdened with the seeds of a by-the-numbers supernatural conspiracy. This episode introduces Barbara Hershey (A Killing in a Small Town) as Ann Rutledge, a sage mentor who has been secretly guiding Damien along his path and who conveniently shows up whenever the show’s mysteries need stoking with a little cryptic exposition. Opposing her are a group of shadowy Catholic priests/assassins who have their own designs for the Antichrist.

Bradley James as Damien Thorn

The one thing this pilot episode needed to accomplish was to address the question of what sort of story it’s telling. Is this the tale of a man coming to terms with his destiny and preparing to bring about the end times? Or is it an examination of fate vs. free will, with Damien resisting the unholy mission that’s been laid out before him? Either option has its merits, but the answer is never clear. Damien himself does little more than stumble from place to place as he uncovers key pieces of his past and watches as those around him are swept up into a larger-than-life struggle. He’s a disappointingly passive character, neither the creepy hellion of the original film nor a genuine, tortured hero. Conveniently, Damien has forgotten all but the barest details of his early childhood and the events of the original film, which places too much emphasis on the question of if he’s the Antichrist rather than what he’s supposed to do with that knowledge. But this approach certainly allows Kapur to sprinkle in liberal doses of footage from the original film (which only draws attention to the fact that Damien should be a lot older than 30 by now).

Generally, the cast do the best they can with the material they’re given. James mostly spends this episode looking flustered and concerned. Only the climactic scene in the church allows James to flex his dramatic muscles a bit and show genuine emotion. This episode also features Tiffany Hines (Bones) as Damien’s colleague/ex-girlfriend Kelly Baptiste and Megalyn E.K (Arrow) as her sister Simone. Frankly, Simone is the most compelling character of this trio given her struggle to reconcile her faith with the cruel, violent world around her. E.K.’s performance is, accordingly, more memorable than the others. Luckily, she looks to be taking a more active role in the series going forward. Though Hershey is the real star of the show in that regard. Her character may be pulled straight from the Lost playbook, but Hershey gives Rutledge a real charisma and unsettling charm.

Ultimately, Damien is trapped in a precarious state. It doesn’t stand apart from the source material particularly well, and if you’re not already an Omen fan there may not be enough of a hook. On the other hand, the pilot dwells too long on questions to which Omen fans already know the answers. Again, this series needs to decide what story it’s trying to tell and prove that the ongoing saga of Damien Thorn deserves an ongoing TV show in the first place.