Yes, I know I should have done this on the sixth day, but hindsight is 666, right?

If you’ve never seen the movie (like the scaredy-cat I am), an American ambassador, Robert Thorn, adopts a boy in Rome and passes him off as the dead son his wife gave birth to. Never good to start a family with a lie, but keep going. You’re rich, so this might work out for you.

At the kid’s fifth birthday party, they give him quite the country side bash in London (the Thorns’ new home), complete with extremely dangerous kid-size carnival rides and the traditional nanny suicide. Had to check to make sure this wasn’t just a “British” thing. It isn’t.

A priest from Rome shows up in England, I assume on a routine “evil child recall” notice. Thorn dismisses the priest’s plea to save him at first, but then he probably realizes he’s just blackmailing him. I sometimes wish a dude from Rome would remind me every day to eat some bread and drink some wine. Reclaiming my Body of Christ.

The photographer who was at the party is now very interested in this birthday party turned suicide, as anyone would be. So he decides to start hanging around the ambassador’s office and places he frequents.

Meanwhile, a new governess shows up and assures the Thorns that SHE won’t commit suicide because she doesn’t have boyfriends OR a home to miss. So there. This is definitely a “British” thing. They quickly realize neither of them hired this Mrs. Baylock but shrug it off. Come on, this is the 70s and you are in England and an American ambassador. Just check one reference. And maybe the first time she brings an evil dog in the house, you don’t ask politely to get rid of it. You take it out back and shoot it (it’s not a real dog, it’s a friend of Satan).

After a completely normal tantrum at a church, Thorn realizes his kid has never been sick a day in his life. Which makes me wonder, maybe the anti-vaxxers are worried they won’t be able to pick out the demon children from the regular children (here’s a hint, anti-vaxxers, you’re the demon).

The priest and the photographer finally convince Thorn that he needs to go on a scavenger hunt to kill his child. Sorry, Son of the Devil. Meanwhile at home, the kid is actively trying to kill the mother. Come on, why isn’t he in school or at least at a Nanny-Child yoga class or something?

The priest is now dead so the photographer and Thorn go back to Italy to find the priest who gave him Damien. Conveniently all the birth records were burned in a fire. The refer back to the “prayer” the priest sputtered to Thorn. In it, the scavenger hunt poem/prayer reveals the child will rise from the role of politics. Now…I’m not saying Tiffany Trump is the Antichrist…but….has anyone ever seen her get the flu?

Thorn is told how to kill his little vessel of evil and hurries back to London to do it. Instead he ends up getting killed himself and his son/5 year old demon is now free to roam about the world and bring on Armageddon. I imagine this movie caused a massive drop in the popularity of the name “Damien” and hopefully an increase in checking nanny references.