2006's remake of THE OMEN has a big budget, some big stars and much improved special effects over the original 1976 version.
So why does it fall so flat?
Liev Schreiber takes on the Gregory Peck role of Ambassador Robert Thorn, a fast rising star in the world of politics (the eternal sea....).
As the film opens, his wife Katherine (Julia Stiles, badly miscast) has given birth to a stillborn son and a mysterious priest offers to switch babies for Robert, creating a new life for a newborn whose mother died at the same time in childbirth.
Of course that switcheroo is loaded with problems as Thorn's been downgraded to raising The Antichrist.
As Damien grown older, bizarre deaths begin to surround him and the Thorn's world grows scarier and scarier.
In probably the film's most interesting story angle, photographs of those about to die show hints of how they will perish. It's an intriguing premise, well played here by David Thewlis as photographer Keith Jennings.
Pete Postlethwaite is very good as Father Brennan, the first figure to approach Thorn and tell him that Damien isn't what he seems.
His big death scene is the perfect example of what's wrong with this updated remake versus the seventies original.
Postlethwaite is a FAR superior actor to Patrick Troughton in the original. The special effects of his death are ten times as good as the original's simple effects. But this time, Father Brennan's meeting with Robert is under a dark bridge, with thunder booming and lightening flashing and Marco Beltrami's music (a pale contributor compared to Jerry Goldsmith's Academy Award winning score in the original) over communicating every emotion.
In the original, their conversation was on a perfectly sunny day in a beautiful park, which only became ominous after Thorn left and clouds rolled in immediately. Goldsmith's score exploded onto the screen when a bolt of lightning barely misses Father Brennan, until then it's just a howling wind and scary silence as the evil approaches.
In this update, everything is literal, nothing builds.
Thewlis is terrific, Mia Farrow brings serious menace as Mrs. Baylock, but its too little too late.
This version was written by David Seltzer, the SAME screenwriter as the original. Most scenes and much of the dialogue is identical to the first. The only changes are all to explain many of the mysteries of the original version, along with some dream sequences for Katherine as she becomes terrified that Damien is not her son.
Like the rest of this pointless remake, you wonder why (beyond hopes at the box office) they would bother remaking the same screenplay twice.
Why bother indeed.
This version only scares up a C.
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