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Directed by Richard Donner and written by David Seltzer, The Omen is perhaps the best in the devil-child cycle of movies that followed in the wake of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Adrian Schober's 'Devil's Advocate' entry covers the genesis, authorship, production history, marketing and reception of film, before going on to examine the overarching theme of paranoia that drives the narrative: paranoia about the 'end times'; paranoia about government and conspiracy; paranoia about child rearing (especially, if one strips away the layer of Satanism); and paranoia about imagined threats to the hardening-right-wing Establishment from liberal and post-countercultural forces of the 1970s.

Omen (Motion picture : 1976) --- horror cinema --- paranoia --- evil children --- US cinema --- American politics