Nothing Left But the Doing

There's nothing quite like a second act turning point you can really feel. In The Omen, Gregory Peck is an ambassador who's been tormented by a prophecy that his secretly adopted son Damien is actually the Antichrist. The second act is filled with denial, then mounting doubt, shame, and fear-- must he really kill his five year old boy?

At the second act turning point, Peck learns his wife has been horrifically killed. Explaining what has happened to his photographer friend who's helping uncover the mystery of Damien's origins, Peck lies on his hotel bed facing us, and says this:

When the Jews return to Zion
And a comet rips the sky
And the Holy Roman Empire rises,
Then you and I must die.
From the eternal sea he rises,
Creating armies on either shore,
Turning man against his brother
'Til man exists no more.

Kathy's dead. I want Damien to die, too.

And then, the race to (he hopes) kill his little boy begins.

That, my friends, is how you enter the third act.

*In case it needs to be reiterated, this blog does not promote the killing of children.