It may not be as fascinating as it was in that first season,
but A&E’s “Bates Motel” is still an entertaining drama, grounded by two
excellent performances from Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore. Since “Bates
Motel” became a hit, the network has been trying to find the right partner for
it. The quest for a dance partner for Norman Bates has brought them to another
show based on a horror classic, “Damien,” based on the 1976 hit “The Omen” (and
wisely ignoring sequels and remakes of that film). In that film, Damien Thorn’s
father (Gregory Peck) became convinced that his son was a tool of the devil.
With reports of Satanism on the rise in an increasingly crime-riddled world, “The
Omen” struck a nerve in the mid-‘70s. The TV version joins a landscape absolutely
dominated by horror programming as everyone tries to find the next “Walking
Dead.” “Damien” is not that show. It is a show in search of the right tone, littered
with laughable dialogue and a notable uncertainty of what it’s supposed to be.
The horror doesn’t work, the characters aren’t defined and the plot is
ludicrous. You’d be better off watching one of the “Omen” sequels.
Damien (Bradley James) is a conflict journalist, who we meet
in Damascus, one of the most violent parts of the world. As he’s working with
colleagues (including a buddy played by Omid Abtahi and an ex-girlfriend),
violence erupts. Damien is grabbed by an old woman who knows his name and even
quotes the line from the film, “It’s all for you, Damien,” which the child’s
governess said before throwing herself from the family roof with a noose around
her neck. Her eyes go white and she “gives” Damien flashbacks to a childhood
that he has apparently regressed. It also happens to be Damien’s 30th
birthday (don’t do the math on the movie’s release date of 40 years ago), the same
time of life in which Jesus was reportedly baptized. Damien is a little
confused.
And I really mean “a little.” “Damien” is one of those shows
in which ridiculous, supernatural, definitively insane things can happen and
people look at each other as if they got a text from a wrong number. When
Damien says, “This is why I left, Kelly. I couldn’t drag you into this,” I
couldn’t help but laugh. This? You
mean the end of the world? Being a tool of Satan? Methinks you’re underplaying
the situation a bit. A vast majority of the dialogue in the premiere of “Damien”
comes from this school of melodramatic soap opera. It would sound at home on “Blood
& Oil.” And the atrocious lines aren’t even in the so-bad-it’s-fun
department because the producers of “Damien,” including the typically-sharp
Glen Mazzara of “The Walking Dead” and “The Shield,” take the whole thing so seriously. The producers of “Bates
Motel” brilliantly know when to put their tongue in their cheek. “Damien”
thinks it’s a serious drama about killer Satan dogs.
It doesn’t help that the cast, especially James, is so dull.
Reportedly, “Deadwood”’s Robin Weigert and “The Walking Dead”’s Scott Wilson
show up in future episodes, but I can only judge the premiere as that’s all I’ve
seen. Barbara Hershey does enliven the proceedings in one scene as a mysterious
overseer for Damien, but her scene is the only one in the first episode that
crackles. It’s interesting to see a show like “Damien” that embraces its source
material—even using clips from it—instead of rebooting or reimagining them. It’s
a very direct sequel, which is rare, and its ancestor certainly took itself
seriously as well, although Bradley James is no Gregory Peck. And these
callbacks mostly serve to show how shallow “Damien” is in comparison. It feels
like “The Chris Farley Show” of horror programs—remember “The Omen,” wasn’t it
awesome?
