It makes me think of the movie "The Devil's Advocate" with Al Pacino in it playing the Devil ... :-)
There is definitely “something” in this picture. No one that I have ever shown it to has responded in a positive manner. All responses have been very similar. Evil, hateful, scary, his eyes, why is he looking like that.
I have always thought that there is something about still photographs of certain people that capture their essence. Certainly not in every photo, and not in every person, but every now and then, a person’s essence is captured in a shot, and is plainly visible to almost anyone who looks at it. To be perfectly honest, I have not even seen pictures of Adolf Hitler that shake me to my core as this photo of Obama does.