The Omen (2006/Theatrical Film Review)

 

Stars: Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, David Thewlis, Mia Farrow

Director: John Moore

Critic's rating: 3 out of 10

 

Review by Chuck O'Leary

 

Released thirty years ago this month, The Omen became the biggest hit of the summer of 1976, and spawned two worthwhile, underrated sequels, Damien: Omen II (1978) and The Final Conflict (1981).  Unfortunately, producer Harvey Bernhard got greedy, and decided to make another made-for-TV sequel about a demonic little girl called Omen IV: The Awakening (1991), which was awful, and put an unnecessary stain on the franchise.

 

Based upon what is foretold in the Bible's Book of Revelation about the coming of the Antichrist, the first three Omen films were chilling, and especially scary to those with religious beliefs.  The first three make one of the most-interesting trilogies of all-time, and have become ingrained in the popular culture, making the devil's number "666" known to all, and forever tainting the name Damien.

 

Forth and fifth Omen novels were written about the offspring of Antichrist Damien Thorn, but instead of filming those, Fox made the boneheaded decision to remake the 1976 original with virtually the same screenplay (by David Seltzer), despite the fact that the original is now widely considered a horror classic. 

 

In this era of unnecessary and pointless remakes, The Omen is unequivocally the most unnecessary and totally pointless remake since Gus Van Sant's Psycho (1998).  And like Van Sant's already largely forgotten rehash of Hitchcock's classic, The Omen remake promises to have fans of the original wearily asking, "Why?"

 

Yes, why?  When you remake a film as good as The Omen, there's only one way to go, and that's down.  So what's the point if there isn't any room for improvement?  Even though it pretends to justify its existence with an opening montage of real-life tragedies (the 9/11 attacks on The World Trade Center, the 2004 Asian Tsunami, etc.) that can be construed as the signs of Armageddon accompanying the arrival of the Antichrist from the Book of Revelation, the remake of The Omen may be the only movie ever remade to exploit a specific date, 6-6-06.  The three sixes in the release date appears to be the only real reason Fox decided to refilm the same script 30 years later, because it sure ain't a passion for the material.

 

Fox clearly knows it has a much-inferior product on its hands since it's releasing a new two-disc collector's edition of the 1976 original two weeks after the remake opens.  Nowadays the DVD special editions of originals almost always are available in stores a few days before the remake opens in theaters, often appearing with a free ticket to the new version as a bonus feature.  In this case, Fox obviously doesn't want the 1976 original fresh in people's minds when the remake opens on 6-6-06 because they know the remake stinks in comparison.

 

This begs the question, instead of wasting a reported $60 million (before prints and advertising) on a dreadful remake, why not have director Richard Donner supervise a longer cut of his 1976 original and have him incorporate the deleted scenes back into a new cut, and re-release that version to theaters.  It worked six years ago with The Exorcist, so why not try the same thing with The Omen?  There has to be a lot of people out there (like myself) who were too young in 1976 to see the original in theaters, and would love to have the opportunity to do so all these years later.

 

Why do an inevitably inferior remake and sully the original's name?  And if you must do a remake, why not redo one of late '70s, early '80s Omen rip-offs like The Chosen (aka Holocaust 2000), The Godsend or Fear No Evil, all films where there's a lot of room for improvement.  Earlier this year, Fox released a surprisingly good remake of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes.  The difference is Craven's 1977 original is merely a good B movie, not a great film, and the Hills remake is done with a conviction and intensity this listless Omen remake so desperately lacks.

Other than adding one death early in the story, restaging a couple of the other deaths and adding a few of those trendy, irritating shock cuts, the storyline of The Omen is basically the same, but all the other changes, from the actors, settings, camera angles and music, pale in comparison to Donner's excellent original.

 

Directed by John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, 2004's passable remake of The Flight of the Phoenix), The Omen remake has Liev Schreiber doing his best Gregory Peck imitation as Robert Thorn, an American diplomat living in Rome.  When the movie opens, Thorn's wife, Katherine (Julia Stiles), delivers a baby that dies shortly after childbirth without her knowing.  Robert then lets the priests and nuns at the hospital talk him into taking another orphaned baby to pass off as their own in order to spare Katherine the emotional trauma of losing a child. 

 

In the meantime, Robert is appointed as the Ambassador to Great Britain and moves to London with Katherine and little Damien.  All seems OK until Damien's 5th birthday when mysterious deaths begin to occur, and a petrified priest shows up telling Robert that he's adopted the son of Satan.

 

Aside from Pete Postlethwaite, who matches predecessor Patrick Troughton's intensity as the doomed Father Brennan, the cast of the remake isn't nearly as effective.  Schreiber, 21 years younger than Peck when he played the role, and Stiles, 15 years younger than Lee Remick was when she played the role, are too young for their respective parts, and Mia Farrow, who's already too closely associated with another famous devil movie, Rosemary's Baby (1968), isn't nearly as creepy as Billie Whitelaw was in the original as Mrs. Baylock, Damien's new nanny, who's really an apostle of hell.

 

Another problem with the remake is that the kid cast as Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) always seems too aware of the fact he's playing a bad seed, and a couple of Davey-Fitzpatrick's unsubtle frowns elicited unintentional laughs from the audience.  In the original, little Harvey Stephens came across as more natural, and seemed oblivious to Damien's evil nature, which is realistic since Damien didn't become aware that he was the Antichrist until he turned 13 in Omen II.

 

Moore manages to make just a couple of scenes work -- the decapitation of the photographer is still a shockingly gruesome moment, and Father Brennan's death scene unfolds in a more realistically stormy background this time.  Everything else, though, fails to measure up.  Marco Beltrami's musical score can't put a patch on Jerry Goldsmith ominous Oscar-winning score from the original, and a poorly-edited graveyard scene featuring what looks like shadows of CGI-generated dogs epitomizes how far filmmaking has deteriorated in 30 years. 

 

The Omen remake is ideas-starved Hollywood's latest desecration of a classic, and it surely won't be the last.  But if this thoroughly needless travesty does one thing, I hope it will inspire younger viewers to see the original trilogy.