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Omen, The |
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Robert
Thorn, the American ambassador of England and
his wife Kate is raising their young son Damien.
What seems like a cute, normal kid is really the
anti-Christ reborn in human shape. The people who
knows this and try to warn Robert and Kate quickly
turn up dead in mysterious accidents and Robert
and Kate soon starts to get suspicious, but it
might be too late...
Okay, the idea with remakes should be that the
filmmakers have something new, fresh to offer the
story - not that the key date of the film actually
is happening. It's a great way to sell a movie,
but it surely isn't a guarantee that it's a good
film. And I'm sorry, but it's not. With the sole
new, original thing added to the film (a clever
made-up connection between the birth of anti-Christ
and real, current disasters) taking place in the
opening sequence, the rest is just a rehash of the
original 1976 classic.
This remake has the same problem as Gus Van Sant's
1998 version of "Psycho" (though this is slightly
better than that worthless piece of crap) - it's not
really a remake, a modern update or even a sequel.
It's just a retelling, new actors playing up the
same old scenes we've seen before. It almost seems
they were using practically the same script (with a
few changes, including some peculiarly placed
nightmare sequences). Unlike the horrific "Psycho"
remake (which often felt like a bad "Saturday Night
Live" spoof-skit) this just reminds of a much
better film.
The acting is one major flaw. You don't easily
replace great actors from a classic movie. They
made a good job trying to find good, talented
actors instead of just the usual bunch of pretty
faces (take any recent horror remake as example)
but it doesn't feel like anyone's involved is pretty
interested in the story, or even acting against
each other. They're just playing the same old scenes
we've seen before, without adding any particular
emotion or feeling to it.
Liev Schreiber is a decent actor who works quite
well in more wacky horror film parts like in
"Scream 2" and "Phantoms". Here he's just stiff and
one-note, using practically the same face
expression throughout the entire film. Same goes for
young Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick as Damien. He looks
like the evil brat he is from the first frame, and
because of that it never gets scary or creepy when
his parents find out his true identity. The great
thing about the original Damien, Harvey Stephens
(who has a quick cameo) was that he never looked
evil - he was just a cute kid.
Julia Stiles, Mia Farrow and David Thewlis (who
should really reconsider a new agent... I mean
"Basic Instinct 2"?) are all great actors but their
characters are poorly underwritten and never
developed. Stiles feel miscast, and mostly cry
and sob her way through the film. It's fun to see
Farrow returning to the horror screen (still looking
great almost 40 years after "Rosemary's baby") but
her casting feels more like a ploy thing. Her evil
babysitter is mostly a campy villain (even though
her hospitals encounter with Stiles i creepy) and
in the climax she turns into Mrs. Voorhees from "
Friday the 13th".
Overall, this is a pointless remake adding nothing
new to the either the genre or the story. The whole
anti-Christ is very 70s and if you're gonna make
a modern film about it, you just can't take an old
classic and retell it without imagination or new
ideas. "The Exorcist" or "Rosemary's Baby" would
never work like that either. Let's hope they won't
make a new "Damien - Omen II" starring Ryan Reynolds
and Jessica Biel...
The death scenes have naturally been refreshed with
some flashy, modern effects which works quite well,
with the classic impalement and decapitation still
there but in new shape.
Marco Beltrami is a great horror film composer but
here it just makes the scenes overly explicit, and
almost pretentious. Jerry Goldmsith's classic,
Oscar-winning score is surely missed.
Pointless remake with nothing new or fresh to add
to the story. The cast is practically just retelling
the same old script. Flashy effects, pretentious
score making the scenes explicit, a one-note Liev
Schreiber, a sobbing Julia Stiles and Mia Farrow
as a campy villain, all reminding us of a better film.
Review By: Slicer-Dicer
