Dir. John Moore, 2006, US, 108 mins
Cast: Live Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Mia Farrow, David Thewlis
Review by Richard Badley
6/6/06 must have seemed like God’s (or rather the Devil’s) gift to the marketing bods at 20th Century Fox, but, as you’ll quickly realise from this uninspiring and worryingly-dated remake, they’d have had more success using it for a re-release of the original on DVD. Little effort has gone into updating the 1976 horror classic and screenwriter David Seltzer even retains the sole credit behind the story, with any alterations simply going as far as ‘youthing’ the cast or chucking a bit more gore into the spectacular deaths that are the film’s only moments of interest.
The Thorns, played by a young-ish Liev Schreiber and the disturbingly young Julia Stiles, are moving quickly up the political ladder, but the only thing missing from their lives is a child. Fate, or so it seems, gives them Damien. But as he grows up, strange things begin to affect the troubled boy. Robert Thorn’s position as the US ambassador in London looks threatened by Satan himself and, following the bizarre ramblings of Father Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite), he must team up with grubby journo Jennings (David Thewlis) to find out if he should be turning to the Bible for help or getting Damien on a course of Ritalin. All this is wrapped up in a tenuous back story involving astrologer priests half-heartedly interpreting prophecies, with flailing Nostradamus-like accuracy, that attempt to rope in 9/11, New Orleans, the Gaza strip and the coming apocalypse, creating not an atmosphere of cold dread, but one of desperate play on the audience’s emotion.
Since the original Omen, the Devil-as-human, computer, beast, plant pot and so on is a well-tread story and so well-recognised by modern audiences that the remake can no longer hold any surprises. Thorn does almost raise a relevant point by accusing scholar Buganhagen (Michael Gambon wasted in one scene) of reading rubbish into any old scripture as an excuse for murder, and comes dangerously close to an interesting comment on the justification for today’s acts of terrorism, but this, sadly, is never explored in a script that is always pressed up to the audience’s nose. Tension is further lost whenever Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick’s Damien is scowling to the camera - his proposed end can’t come soon enough.
With this being John Moore’s second remake in a row (his previous work was the empty retread of Flight of the Phoenix), he is adept at raising the stakes in terms of shaking up the visuals, but fails to realise the story itself needs an overhaul. The Omen has ludicrous sets (you’ll never have seen bathrooms or psychiatrist offices like these) and Prague once again stands in for the spookier side of London. The scares don’t come through use of atmosphere, but through bombarding the viewer with sound and images. While Brennan’s famous spearing and an effective decapitation stand up to the cinema of today’s gorier benchmarks, they’ll never be as well-orchestrated or gleeful as those seen in the likes of Final Destination.
It’s a surprise that Schreiber comes off as the least theatrical thing in the movie; he restrains his usual larger-than-life acting style to put together a half-decent pairing with the comical Thewlis. But even their earnest attempts do little to save The Omen, which merely serves as a warning that, over the years, the church has lost the image of mystery or spirituality it used to display in ’70s cinema. Instead it revels in its own diversions and ignores the true problems of the world that audiences witness everyday across the media. In fact, if the Devil ever did put in an appearance, we’d be saying welcome home rather than trying to save the day.
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