The last horror, thriller or suspense film you watched

The Omen

I've of course seen it before, but it's been quite a while, and it's always nice to revisit. It doesn't necessarily stack up next to The Exorcist or Rosemary's Baby, but this one still really holds up. Yes, it has some campier moments, but a lot of it is truly atmospheric and frightening. A large part of that is Jerry Goldsmith's masterful score, it's just a thing of perfection. The performances are great all around, but has there ever been a more easily unlikable child actor as Harvey Spencer Stephens? And I mean that as a positive thing. The little bastard just looks so damned evil. It's no wonder he never acted again.

One thing I noticed on this viewing is just how 70's a lot of things in the movie are. I've never seen that remake, but it really makes me wonder how you could set this story in 2006 without changing the plot at all. You're gonna tell me that in a post-9/11 world somebody could just walk into a U.S. Ambassador's office and lock himself in without being shot by over-cautious Secret Service guards? And it's really hard for me to contemplate that safari parks like the one shown in the movie were even ever a thing. I realize that they were, but it seems like such a phenomenally stupid, dangerous idea to me. People should've gotten killed driving through those things. Hell, it's hard to believe nobody got mauled or killed while filming that scene.