The Omen or The Exorcist

I adore them both but if I absolutely had to choose I'd say The Omen. It just feels darker and creepier to me. The music, atmosphere, acting, story, and death scenes are all top notch and I consider it one of the best horror movies ever made. The Exorcist has all these qualities as well, but I find myself enjoying The Omen more in repeat viewings.

Between the two, I'd say The Exorcist.

The music, the mood, the story, the level of craft, I feel are all a little more tightly notched in The Exorcist.
I quite like The Omen everytime I watch it, but I don't find any desire to revisit it on any sort of regular basis. I could pop it in every 3 or so years and come away happy with it--but again not feeling any immediate desire to watch it again. Whereas The Exorcist I watch probably once a year. Just everything about that movie works for me, and I'm quite frequently drawn back to it.
(Just to note--I mean the original theatrical version. Not any of the releases.)


But that's out of those two.
Out of three you mentioned...Rosemary's Baby. I cannot get enough of that film.

For me it's Rosemary's baby. Visually perfect IMO, the acting is superb and the music is spooky.
And you forgot Suspiria,that would be my next choice.

I have always found the Omen to be very boring and the Exorcist to be overrated. If you want scary a year later the Texas chainsaw massacre was released and is an American treasure. Followed by jaws,dawn of the dead and Halloween all from that great decade of horror.

Exorcist. The Omen is more of a traditional genre film. It’s a very effective horror and in many ways darker than The Ex because of the ending and the number of people killed. The mother’s story alone is one of the most tragic and disturbing ‘arcs’ of a character ever - she never even finds out the truth about ‘her’ child. She tries to love it but it hates her and wants to kill her, she goes increasingly insane, is hospitalised by the evil brat, and then gets murdered by Baylock. The film is relentlessly cruel to her.

Exorcist actually has a ‘happy’ ending but… it puts you through the meat grinder like few other films. The docu-realism is more effective than The Omen’s Hollywood production values, and when the possession really kicks in you see things that nobody should have in their head, including a young girl violently masturbating with a crucifix and stuffing her mothers face into the bloody mess, screaming ‘let Jesus fuck you!’ and ‘lick me!’

That shit had people fainting in the cinemas, I still can’t believe it got through the censors. Most of all though, The Exorcist is about something, it’s about the mystery of faith and it uses the horror genre to meaningfully explore real issues, much like The Shining.

The Exorcist is best.

I assume that this topic is mean to look at the 2 movies in a vacuum, but the Omen is a trilogy. The second and third movies, follow Damien through his rise and fall and they are good movies in their own right. The exorcist has a true sequel, but people like to pretend it doesn’t exist, and it’s for good reason.

I don’t think anyone has mentioned music yet. The scores of the Omen movies are always amazing, it always sounds evil, and it sets the mood for the movies. I know the Exorcist has tubular Bell, and more recognizable than anything in the omen. But I don’t think it sets the mood the same way. If you take it out of context, it’s really next scary, it’s just a good song. The music in the Omen always feels evil, and it’s doing it’s job even when you don’t notice it.