The film opens with a researcher at the Vatican Observatory, discovering that
a comets falling fast to the Earth. He is aware of what the sign means,
and notifies his superior about it immediately. The priest realizes the doom this represents,
and immediately summons the rest of the council to announce the findings
from his recent studies on Revelation, chapter eight of the Bible to the Pope.
As it turns out, there is a prophecy in the bible that mentions about the signs leading up to
doomsday, which involves different disasters that would occur everytime an Angel blow his trumpet.
Five out of seven angels have already blown their trumpets, and the falling comets,
A.K.A a star fell from heaven to earth, would imply the blowing of the 5th trumpet,
and to Him was given the key to bottomless pit. When the 6th trumpet is blown,
the Devil was freed from the bottomless pit, and wreaked havoc upon the earth.
Meanwhile on the other side of the story, an American diplomat, Robert, rushes up to
the catholic hospital in Rome. He's informed by the head priest, Father Spiletto, that his wife,
Kate, just had a miscarriage. Father Spiletto then tells him that his wife's womb is damaged,
meaning she won't be able to give birth to any more children. In attempt to mend their
broken hearts, Father Spiletto brings him an orphaned child, and advises him to adopt. He
tells Robert the child lost his mother at the same time Robert's wife lost her child.
Later that morning, the grieving couple lovingly embrace the baby, but Robert doesn't disclose the
secret adoption as the priest instructed. They raise the baby like their own for years to come,
and they name the child Damien. Robert, who works as an official
at the American Embassy in Rome, has later made the deputy ambassador to the United
Kingdom after his superior, Steven. Therefore, he must relocate his family from Rome to London.
But just so happens, that very day on Steven's way to an emergency meeting, he gets stuck in traffic.
At the same time, a homeless man accidentally knocked a wheel stopper aside,
consequentially sending a tanker truck rolling down into the street.
The tanker truck collides with the ambassador’s limo. Even worse, the spilled gasoline makes
contact with the cigarette stub, and an explosion happens.
Three months after Steven's
horrifying death, Robert steps into Stephen's office as the new ambassador to Great Britain.
He also moves to live in a mansion in London with his wife, and their adopted son, Damien.
Skip to two years later, the couple throws a party to celebrate Damien’s fifth birthday. During it,
we get introduced to the nanny, who notices a black dog watching the party from afar,
while in the background, a photographer named Keith Jennings
is busy taking pictures of the event. Right after, the nanny heads to the roof,
and proclaims that she’s doing all ‘this’ for Damien, before throwing herself off the ledge and
gets hung to death.
As the guests panic, Robert scoops his son up to shield him from the sight,
but Damien appears unfazed and simply waves at the dog.
As Robert is a public figure, the news about the nanny suicide doesn’t
go unnoticed; the embassy is swarming with reporters and photographers
when he shows up for work the next day. He later accidentally collides with Keith the photographer,
who falls and damages his camera. Robert promises to pay for the damages.
and at some point, a priest from Rome called Father Brennan asks to see him.
Once face to face with Robert, the priest frantically informs him that his son, Damien,
is the Devil’s offspring, and claims that he was there at the hospital the night Damien was born.
Father Brennan claims that he participated in how Robert was given another child as his son.
Brennan also saw Damien’s mother, whom he claimed wasn’t human but instead a jackal.
Because all this sounds insane, Robert has the man escorted out of the facility immediately,
and it turns out Keith the photographer happens to be there as well, taking pictures of the priest.
When Robert returns home, he accompanies his wife in interviewing a new nanny named Mrs. Baylock.
The couple finds her impressive, and hires her immediately.
Meanwhile on the other side of the city, Keith the photographer decides to print
the pictures he took today, and saw a strange line stretching above Father Brennan’s head.
On the next day, Kate is all dressed up to attend the previous nanny’s funeral,
and asks for Mrs. Baylock to fetch Damien. The nanny however,
claims that Damien is feeling under the weather, and therefore is not fit to go out.
Kate doesn’t believe this, and makes Damien go to church with them. On their way to the church,
we can clearly see that Daniel looks unwell, seeing the symbols of Christ on church towers.
They begin to haunt Damien on the way, and upon arrival,
he suddenly goes feral and starts attacking his mom, injuring Kate as a result.
This forces the
family to drive away from the church as to not to cause a scene in front of the reporters.
They return home immediately, and Robert spends the evening dressing up the cut on Kate’s forehead.
Here Kate points out how weird it is to find Damien sick all of the sudden, because strangely,
the boy has never been ill a day in his life. That night, Kate has a nightmare about lying in
the bathtub with her wrist slit, and Damien menacingly standing right across from her.
On the other side of the house, Robert walks into Damien’s room, to find a dog growling at him.
Mrs. Baylock then steps in, and orders it to stop. Apparently, she and Damien
found the dog roaming around the premises, and since Damien likes it, decided to bring it in.
Hearing this aggravates Robert, who orders Mrs. Baylock to get rid of the dog immediately.
The following day, Kate accompanies Damien on a field trip to the zoo,
and here we see that the monkeys are acting hostile toward the child.
Like a creep, Damien stares at the monkeys, and cockily murmur that the monkeys are afraid of him.
When his mother tries to carry him away, all of the sudden,
one of the gorillas charges at the enclosure glass, as if eager to attack the child.
The mortified Kate breaks down when she recounts the story to her husband that night,
and although she feels bad for saying this, she is convinced there is something off about Damien.
Later that night, Robert is attending a church function, right when Father Brennan approaches
him. The priest quickly mentions a time and place to meet up, claiming that Robert’s wife
is in danger. Plus, he says that would be the last time Robert would be seeing him.
As the priest walks out of the building, Keith the photographer snaps more pictures of him.
Once Keith gets home, he appears to be
studying something fascinating in the latest pictures he took.
On the next day, Robert agrees to meet with Father Brennan, and during this encounter,
the priest asks him to seek out a man called Bugenhagen, because he is the only person who
would know how to murder the child. Once again, the priest reiterates that Damien
is the Devil’s son, and therefore must be terminated before he harms Robert’s wife.
According to Father Brennan, Kate is currently pregnant with another child, and Damien will
ensure she doesn't give birth, which is why he was told by Father Spiletto that her womb was damaged.
In other words, something was preplanned from the start by the head priest and his group.
Finding everything that the priest said absurd, Robert tells him to stay away from his family,
before stomping away. Once the priest is on his own, he suddenly hears an ominous voice
coming from nowhere, and starts running away in fear. He runs toward a church,
but the door locks on its own before he could get in. And then all of the sudden,
a pole on the roof breaks and impales him, killing the poor man instantly.
To Robert’s surprise, when he arrives home, Kate suddenly informs him that she is indeed pregnant,
confirming what the priest just told him. However, Kate wishes to have an abortion,
because she doesn’t want any more children like Damien. Shortly after, Robert reads a
news article, noting that the priest had just been killed in a strange accident.
While Robert is away, Damien and Mrs. Baylock share knowing looks, and glance at a scooter.
Damien rides his scooter, while at the same time, Kate is watering the plants.
Surprisingly, the scooter is used by Damien to knock his mother off the balcony.
She hangs over the edge and asks for help, but the son simply watches until she slips and falls.
Luckily, the mother survives but they discover that she suffered a miscarriage from the accident.
At the hospital, she whispers to Robert, and begs him to protect her from Damien. When Robert gets
home right after, he discovers that the dog he wanted to kick out is still in the house.
But before he gets to do something about it, he gets a call from Keith the photographer who
promptly introduces himself. Keith claims to have something to talk about Robert and Father Brennan.
Curious, Robert pays a visit to Keith’s studio, where we see streaks of white light around
pictures Keith took of the dead nanny, and Father Brennan.
He also has the priest’s autopsy report,
and has learned that there is a birthmark on the inside of the priest’s thigh of the numbers 666.
Afterwards, Keith takes him to the dead priest’s underground hideout, where he stayed before he died.
Here Keith explains that the walls are covered in hundreds of bible pages and crucifixes.
As it turns out, the photographer has done his research and has looked through the priest’s
things. Keith learned that the priest had been obsessing over a comet that fell 5 years
ago on June 6th, and kept newspaper clippings covering Damien’s birth on that day at 06:00 A.M.
Keith also tells Robert that he thinks he’s going to die next, because he found himself with
the same streak on a picture he recently took. Since Keith wants to prevent himself from dying,
he wants to make himself useful by helping Robert discover Damien’s true origin.
The two men then head to Rome to track down a nun, who used to work at the hospital where
Damien was born. She has a burn scar on her face, as apparently, the hospital burnt down the same
night Damien was born. With the nun’s help, they track down the hospital’s former head priest,
Father Stiletto, who was the one who offered Robert to adopt baby Damien.
While they make a lunch stop on the way, Keith points out the bible passage that prophesied
the birth of the Antichrist, and explains how he will be born after the fallen star.
Keith also reads passages about a beast will rise from the sea, which is a metaphor for politics,
and that the devil's child will rise from the world of politics.
Keith then decides that it makes sense that they picked Robert to be a part of this.
Afterwards, they go ahead and meet Father Stiletto whose face is now deformed from the fire.
Robert then asks him who Damien’s real mother is, to which he replies by writing down the name of
an old cemetery north of Rome. The two drive up there, but are forced to find their way around
on foot, because the cemetery gate is locked shut. After successfully entering it, they discover two
graves of a mother and child, who died on June 6th five years ago, and proceed to unravel it.
Inside, they find the rotting skeleton of a jackal,
just like what Father Brennan had said. Now beyond curious, Robert unravels the second grave. Inside,
he discovers the skeleton of his biological son with a hole in its skull, signifying
that his wife didn’t have a miscarriage, but rather, the baby was murdered upon its birth.
And then all of the sudden, two dogs jump out of nowhere, and lunge at them.
They fight it off and proceed to climb over the fence, before
running away after sustaining a few injuries.
Meanwhile back in London, Damien and Mrs. Baylock decide to pay a visit to the hospital. The
nurse initially refuses to let her in, but Mrs. Baylock begs to see Kate for just a few minutes.
This is really reckless on the hospital’s part, because the nanny proceeds to inject a fluid into
Kate’s intravenous line. She covers Kate’s mouth when she tries to scream in protest.
As a result, Kate’s heart rate begins to spike as the fluid enters her system,
and the nanny holds her down until the poor woman dies.
The nanny then calmly walks away with Damien. Some time later, Robert receives a devastating
phone call informing him of his wife’s death. He also finds himself getting a nightmare, where he
sees creepy scenes featuring Damien, including one of a stillborn baby getting thrown off a balcony.
When Keith checks up on him, Robert announces that he’s now convinced that Damien is the Antichrist,
and would like to avenge the death of his wife. And so, they head for Israel to find Bugenhagen,
the man father Brennan claimed to be the only one who knows how to stop Damien.
Bugenhagen goes on and tells them the ritual on how to kill Damien,
which involves a set of special knives. When Robert begins to have a second thought,
he remarks that Damien is undoubtedly the Antichrist, because he has got to have a
666 birthmark hidden in his scalp, and that Mrs. Baylock, the nanny, is an apostle of hell.
However, the thought of murder makes Robert feel sick and prompts him to walk out.
Keith packs up the knives, and then goes after Robert to convince him further.
Caught in a heated argument, Robert throws away the set of knives, as he wants nothing to do with
child murder. Seeing that he won't, Keith vows to do it by himself, and goes to retrieve the knives.
Witnessing the scene leaves Robert with no choice, but to eventually take matters into
his own hands, and returns home to England. He sneaks into his own home, and quietly arms
himself with a pair of scissors. But then, the gush of wind caused by the thunderstorm
outside causes a door to shut close, waking up the dog who instantly chases after him.
Robert runs, and tricks the dog into falling down an open hatch. He then goes upstairs into Damien’s
room, where the child is sleeping soundly. Curious whether there’s any truth to Bugenhagen’s words,
he carefully snips Daniel’s hair to try to find the 666 birthmark. Well, he sees it right away.
But all of the sudden, Mrs. Baylock lunges at him, and the two end up in a scuffle.
Robert manages to knock her out and pick up Damien immediately.
Without wasting anymore time, he carries Damien away and pile inside the car,
when suddenly, the nanny smashes a hammer against the windshield.
She blocks the road, but can't block the car.
Robert’s police guards trails after the car as it is speeding like crazy.
But Robert doesn’t care anymore; he takes Damien inside the church, and prepares to perform the ritual
at the altar, while more and more police cars are dispatched after him in the city.
Robert holds the child down, and prepares to stab him,
but the police step in and shoots him dead before he gets the chance to.
The next scene shows Robert’s funeral, while back at the Vatican’s headquarters,
the pope lies in his deathbed and passes away.
The President of the United States of America attends Robert's funeral,
holding Damien by the hand. The movie ends with Damien
smiling devilishly into the camera, ready to wreak havoc as described in the bible.