The Omen: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

(Originally published 2006)

John Moore’s “The Omen” is so slavishly modeled after Richard Donner's 1976 original, it once again raises the question about why Hollywood doesn’t just re-release the original, particularly when they're dealing with a classic and when the remake doesn’t offer much in the way of anything new.

Its fresh crop of actors aside (which obviously is the draw), this “Omen” is a near duplicate of what came before it, with a script by the original film’s screenwriter, David Seltzer, that employs exact scenes, dialogue and situations, and a directing style by Moore that mines the raw, choppy rhythms of ‘70s filmmaking.

For fans of the first movie, this sort of carbon-copy filmmaking likely will seem redundant, if not unnecessary. But then you see the movie and realize that regardless of how familiar it is, it isn’t the stunt Gun Van Sant's "Psycho" was, and it also isn't without its pleasures.

Here, after all, is a horror movie whose intent isn’t to be just a mere gross-out, which is what the horror genre has become, but a horror movie designed to tell a story, which is what the genre has lost. For that reason, you appreciate it in spite of its shortcomings. Yes, the film is a rehash, but at least it's better than those stupid "Saw" movies.

In the film, Liev Schreiber is American diplomat Robert Thorn, who is so distraught when he learns that his moon-faced wife, Katherine (Julia Stiles), has given birth to a stillborn child, he agrees to take from a questionable priest the healthy newborn child of a mother who just died in childbirth. Since the woman had no family, Thorn assumes the child as his own, not realizing that his new bundle of joy is really the spawn of Satan.

Five years later, Thorn has become U.S. Ambassador of England and little Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) is busy putting the "anti" in the Antichrist. Strange things start to happen. His nanny leaps off a roof in a shock hanging ("It's all for you, Damien!"), salivating dogs seem to communicate with him, monkeys go bananas when he gets close to them, and what he does to his mother, well, it just isn't right.

The chief reason to see the movie isn’t for Schreiber or for Stiles, who are too young for the roles, have none of the chemistry of Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, and who bring the movie little punch, nor for Davey-Fitzpatrick, who is a pale, glowering blank slate. Instead, the reason to see it is for Mia Farrow, who is fantastic in the key role of Mrs. Baylock, the shady nanny with the kind face and the mean syringe who comes to live with the Thorns and care for Damien.

Farrow's casting is the film's one flash of inspiration. In 1968, the actress gave birth to the devil in "Rosemary's Baby" and now she's caring for him 38 years later. That twist not only gives the movie its much-needed jolt of fun, but it proves every bit as spot-on as her genuinely creepy, reptilian performance.

Grade: B-