The Omen (2006)

JOHN MOORE

THE OMEN

USA, 2006

2/10

REMAKE OF THE OMEN (1976)

"When the Jews return to Zion, and a comet fills the sky, and the holy Roman Empire rises, then you and I must die. From the eternal sea he rises, creating armies on either shore, turning man against his brother, until man exists no more."

The year was 2005, and some Hollywood executive somewhere thought "Whoa, it's gonna be 6/6/06 next year, quick, let's just quickly throw together a remake of a wonderful film and turn it into a underwhelming, unoriginal, boring, bastardization of a film to make some quick money!"

I'm pretty sure something that almost every horror fan agrees on is that, most of the time, remakes suck. There are obvious exceptions, two of my favorite films are remakes: THE THING (1982) and THE FLY (1986). But, generally, we can all agree that remakes are, most of the time, just boring horse shit released to make money in a genre that movie producers just don't seem to understand any more. And the remake of the classic 1976 film THE OMEN is no exception.

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear about a remake is: why? I thought that when I heard about THE WICKER MAN (2006), or BLACK CHRISTMAS (2006), or HALLOWEEN (2007), or countless others. I mean, all the original films are good enough that they stand on their own, and don't need to be remade. And THE OMEN (1976) is one of those films. But if there's one thing you can count on Hollywood for it's churning out remake after remake just to make money. And I do keep seeing them out of curiosity, so I guess I'm part of the problem here.

The kid who plays Damien here obviously feels he's mastered the "creepy kid stare" because that's what he does the entire film, although he hasn't. A fucking feather is more threatening than Damien in this. And he's nowhere near as creepy as the original Damien was. Liev Schreiber does surprisingly well as Robert Thorn, though not nearly as good as Gregory Peck was in the original.

Something that bothers me much about this remake is that it brings absolutely nothing new to the table. The good remakes I mentioned before, THE THING and THE FLY, are both very different from the original (THE THING is actually a re-adaptation of the story "Who Goes There?" but I'm just calling it a remake for the purposes of this review), and are a re-imagination of the story that is still excellent as its own movie, and still pays homage to the original. If only we still made remakes like this. THE OMEN (2006), however, is different. It's not a shot-for-shot remake (the one thing this movie has going for it) like PSYCHO (1998), but it's pretty close. Many shots are set up in the exact same way as the original, the script brings no new structure, Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber are much too young to play that characters they were cast for, and even talented members of the cast, like Mia Farrow, deliver boring, lifeless performances. THE OMEN is just an all-around horrible film.

While some may believe I am being too harsh on this film, it's honestly just horrid, and nothing new is brought to the table. Even if you're unfamiliar with the story and have never seen the original, it's still remarkably underwhelming and boring. While the film's climax is slightly entertaining, it's nowhere near as wonderful as that in the 1976 one. Stick to the original here.