The Omen, Can it be a Philosophical Good?

The Omen, a 1976 horror movie about the son of the devil, is an eerie and haunting tale. From the beginning of the movie, when Ambassador Thorn is convinced by a priest to take a boy in the hospital after his own child died during birth, throughout the various twists and turns and Thorn’s travels, up until the very final frame, the viewer is tangled into a story rich with clues about whether or not Thorn’s “son,” Damien, is the anti-Christ.

In the beginning of the movie, at Damien’s birthday party, the Thorn’s nanny sees a massive Rottweiler, makes eye contact with it for a period of time, and eventually hangs herself in front of the entire party, and, before she jumps, shouts “Look at me, Damien! It’s all for you.” From this point on, the movie has many haunting moments, whether it be the unexplained deaths of the priest and photographer, the unexplained nanny, Damien’s attempt to kill his mother, or the various trips and characters Ambassador Thorn makes to try to figure out the true identity of his son and what to do about him. Until the very last scene (sorry, I’m not going to ruin it), I was left in a constant state of suspense, trying to piece together the clues given by the priest and photographer, as well as the scenes and depictions of Damien themselves, and until the last five or ten minutes of the movie, Damien’s identity cannot be determined in a doubtless manner.

Philip Nickel explores this sense of uneasiness and horror in his paper Horror and the Idea of Every life. For Nickel, the concept of horror itself is something that needs to be defined philosophically and whether or not it can be good. Nickel himself says his main purpose is “not in defining what horror is but rather in exploring the defense of horror.” Nickel describes two central elements of horror. First, an appearance of the “evil supernatural or of the monstrous” and secondly, the “intentional elicitation of dread, visceral disgust, fear, or startlement in the spectator.” By this definition, The Omen undoubtedly fits into the category of horror, and does so very well. More importantly, to Nickel, is not a definition, but rather this horror genre is something that should be valued. As a genre, horror movies should not be reduced to something as simple as sadistic depictions of violence for perverse eyes, but instead, horror films engage one’s compassionate attitudes, and this is “what makes horror horrifying.” The reactions to the plights of the characters and their outcome and subsequent reflections on their death or maiming instead demonstrate a morally engaged reaction.

Taking this a step further, Nickel tries to tackle the “horror paradox,” btut from a philosophical perspective. This paradox is that we enjoy watching things we know we should not (an example he uses is the stabbing of Marion Crane in Psycho). He argues that there is something good about horror, aesthetically and epistemologically, and that horror helps the viewer gain a perspective on “so-called common sense.” He claims that it helps the viewer to see every day life as one that is not completely safe from threats and that the “security of common sense is a persistent illusion.”

Certainly this argument holds weight in certain horror movies (such as campers being kidnapped in the woods, or a murdered running through the streets killing wildly, as these are realistic threats), but in the sense of The Omen, I find it hard to follow his argument in the sense that The Omen leads viewers away from something (that I believe, at least) that is considered completely farfetched and unlikely to happen. The chances of the anti-Christ being born from a dog and eventually adopted by the President of the United States after killing his whole family and those involved in his birth seem to be far from giving us a “perspective on so-called common sense.”  I will concede, however, that even in a movie with a plot as unlikely as The Omen’s that it does tear away at the illusion of safety caused by common sense. It does make us more aware of our surroundings and to possible threats.

That being said, do you think Nickel’s ideas about what makes horror genre’s hold true in the entire genre of horror? It seems to me like it would only hold true in the instances where a horror movie causes a genuine sense of fear and/or inspection by the viewer, and that in poorly executed films this philosophical good prescribed by Nickel would not apply, as it does not incite these reactions in the viewer. At the same time, however, there are some movies that people believe to be horror films but other laugh at them for being so bad, how can this difference be resolved so that an epistemological good can be found in the genre?