Review of The Omen (2006) by Markb. — 12 Jun 2006

Along with monsoons and sunburn, one inevitable by-product of summer (at least lately) has been a pile of Unnecessary Remakes of box office hits and pop-culture milestones from the 1970s, including in the last two years Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Longest Yard, The Bad News Bears and Poseidon, with Tim Burton's candy-covered remake of the first being the only one of the bunch that had any reason to exist and the only one that didn't absolutely suck.

(Don't be too surprised if, in the next couple years, you're treated to Vince Vaughn and Jack Black taking another whack at the Faber College homecoming parade, Jet Li as a half-Asian, half-Native American martial arts expert kicking redneck ass for peace and justice, and/or Keanu Reeves running down futuristic streets yelling, "Hey! Soylent Green is people, dude!") Surprisingly, this scene-for-scene retread of 1976's effective horror smash about a childless ambassador and his wife who unwittingly adopt the son of Satan, isn't all that bad.

..at least not any time the two lead actors aren't on screen. A big part of what made Richard Donner's original work as well as it did was the sheer class of its two stars, with Gregory Peck's steely solidness and Lee Remick's lovely, fragile vulnerability agdding tremendous tension and poignancy to the ultimate good-vs.

-evil struggle: Atticus Finch himself debating over whether to kill ANY child, however satanic...how heartwrenching is THAT? [***SPOILERS***] Here, Liev Schreiber's single facial expression battles for screen time with his mercilessly unyielding monotone, while Julia Stiles is hopelessly amateurish.

The complete ineptitude of these two pivotal performances has the unfortunate effect of drawing undue attention to the Hell-sized holes in David Seltzer's concept and script: for example, even though Robert Thorn isn't a beliver, he IS a politician, so wouldn't he have taken his son to church sometime before age 5 (if only for show and possible photo ops) and discovered something was amiss a lot earlier? (For that matter, wouldn't we have gotten a far more interesting film all around this time if Thorn had been rewritten as a typically RUTHLESS politician reaping his just desserts, rather than being recycled as a stolid goody-goody?) It both helps and hurts this remake that supporting players David Thewlis, Peter Postlethwaite (both hopefully doing this so they can afford the lower paychecks offered by doing films by Mike Leigh and Jim Sheridan) and Mia Farrow are such effective scene-stealers, with Amy Hunt as little Damien's fragile, doomed first nanny providing an object lesson in how to make a bit role truly unforgettable.

Director John Moore does his best work yet (though considering that his previous films were the forgettable war movie Behind Enemy Lines and the totally uncalled for 1960s remake Flight of the Phoenix, that isn't saying a hell of a lot); he works hard at creating intelligent suspense and building momentum out of a series of foregone conclusions and frequently succeeds, giving us a couple of very effective claw-the-ceiling moments and at least one great gory bit that suggests that the Devil has been boning up on his viewing of Final Destination videos.

By the way, does it strike anyone as a bit curious that while the religious community got all hot under the collar about the movie version of The Da Vinci Code, which could at least get Christians to engage in honest discussions about the particulars of their faith, if they can stay awake during the non-Ian McKellen portions of the film--while this film, which states that Satan can do just as good a job of protecting his son as God did His, only this time God stands idly by and lets the chips fall, debuts (on 6-6-06, no less!) without a chirp of protest.