I also reviewed the film for my school's newspaper, the Kaleidoscope, but I'll be damned if I can find that review and I looked everywhere. My original plan was to simply re-print that review and perhaps add a few more thoughts about how I feel about the film now, having seen it a few more times since, including, most recently, this week, in preparation for the franchise review.
Given that I can't find the original review, obviously that means I'm going to have to write a new one, which is somewhat unfortunate, as it would have been nice to compare and contrast how I felt about it then and how I feel about it now. Oh well.
I'll do my best to remember what my initial feelings about the film were, but it is what it is- some of my old reviews are just plain gone, which sucks. Some of you will recall the main reason I started this blog in the first place was to preserve the ones I still have on my hard drive, as whoever is now in charge at UAB completely eliminated all of the hard work me and the other members of our staff did in the years we were there. (Or was at some point after I graduated- they may not be there anymore, as that was a few years back.)
I didn't even see a comprehensive archive on the website anymore, and there used to be at least that, even if it meant scrolling through pdfs of old newspapers to find your work. That's a shame, but at least I still have some of it. I've slacked off a bit in reprinting those articles here for a while now- hopefully, I'll get back to it soon, as I still have plenty more I can re-post.
In the meantime, here is an all-new review of a movie I've already reviewed once before- which I believe is a first for me. Enjoy, and be sure and check out the final installment of my Omen franchise review in the next few days, in which I'll get into the short-lived TV series and some of the other spin-offs of the franchise. Thanks, as ever, for reading!
The remake of The Omen from 2006 may be one of the first instances in which a film was made to accommodate a date instead of simply plotting out a proposed release date and doing one's best to meet it, changing it if need be on down the line. (For instance, as they do with the Marvel movies.)
No, someone at 20th Century Fox literally noticed that, in 2006, there would be a June 6th, which would mean that, on that particular day, the date would be 06/06/06, and was like: "Hey, we should do a horror movie to tie in with that!" From there, it was a quick jump to the realization that the original version of The Omen was also released on a similar date (06/06/76), but that it had been some 30 years since. Why not do an updated version?
And so the remake came into being. Astonishingly enough, the person in question who had the bright idea to remake The Omen and release it on that date wasn't longtime producer Harvey Bernhard, who was one of the only constants in all the Omen movies to date. (The other being composer Jerry Goldsmith, who did the scores for all the movies, save Omen IV, for which he allowed a few of his musical cues to be used.)
Oddly enough, Bernhard wasn't involved in this one at all, perhaps because of the poor reception Omen IV received. However, original screenwriter David Seltzer, who had opted out of the series early on, was brought back on-board, thus giving him the chance to do what most writers only dream of: right any wrongs he may have made the first time around.
Sure, it sometimes happens when authors of a book or a play or whatever get to adapt their source material themselves, but otherwise its rare. In this case, Seltzer must have been laughing all the way to the bank, because, aside from a few new additions early on in the story and some flourishes at the end, it's basically the same script this time around, too.
Indeed, though it doesn't quite approach the reportedly shot-by-shot remake of Psycho by director Gus Van Sant- which I've never been able to bring myself to watch- damned if it doesn't come close, at least in terms of the script, which is largely unchanged.
Basically, Seltzer just adds a brief prologue, in which a group of religious types gather together to discuss the fact that all signs are currently pointing to the potential birth of the Antichrist. I can see where some people might be offended (even more so at the time this was released) by things like the Challenger space shuttle disaster, Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 terrorist attack being used as plot points heralding the arrival of the ultimate evil- but I can also see them nodding their heads in agreement as well.
Hell, if anything, that sort of thing has only gotten worse. Climate change- or depending how you feel, perhaps God himself- has caused some of the biggest natural disasters ever in recent years. In the meantime, people have become more divided as ever, with a (not my) President that only seeks to divide them further in charge.
What was that it said in Seltzer's poem? "Turning man against his brother, 'til man exists no more." As much as I get Fox wanting to get this out there to meet that devilish date of release, if they had only waited a few more years, imagine how much more relevant this could have been. Then again, it's not as if it's too late to do another one, and the remake does indeed leave the door open for one, so you never know... The Final Conflict redux, anyone?
Fox drafted John Moore to direct, who had done several movies with the company beforehand, including Behind Enemy Lines and Flight of the Phoenix. A big, fiery Irishman with a temper to go along with it- which can be seen in ample display on the behind-the-scenes featurettes included on the DVD/Blu-Rays of all of his movies to date- Fox felt that Moore could bring in the goods on time and on schedule... and hopefully on budget.
This being an Omen movie, naturally there were tales of issues on and off the set. For instance, after the key scene was shot where Robert Thorn cuts the hair off of Damien's head, exposing the tell-tale 666 birthmark, the footage was "accidentally" destroyed, resulting in the entire scene having to be re-shot.
The reel in question? Number 666, but of course. Or so Moore says in the documentary about the movie, at least. Compared to the many tales about the original film, though (see more here), it's small potatoes. It's an inconvenience, to be sure, but it's not like anyone died or was injured or what have you.
Beyond that minor mishap, shooting went as planned for the most part, and the film was indeed shot and was ready to go, come 06/06/06, as the Devil intended. Or Fox, at least. Who may, in fact, be a close associate of the Devil, if their news channel is any indication, lol. 👿
The Omen, despite being an extremely faithful adaption of the source material, does bring a few new wrinkles to the table. The film itself, though it has around the same running time as the original, is tighter, tauter and moves at a much faster clip. The production values are high- with a $25 million budget, it literally cost more than all four previous entries combined, albeit un-adjusted for inflation- so the film looks great.
In addition, special effects have come a long way since the original films, so this one easily has the best FX. Last but not least, the cast is unusually strong for a horror film, even one with the solid reputation of the original Omen, which was no slouch in that department, either.
As Robert Thorn, we have the talented Liev Schreiber, best-known to horror fans for his ongoing turn as the accused murderer Cotton Weary in the first three Scream films, and to your parents as Showtime's Ray Donovan. (I kid, I've seen a little of the show and it's not bad- dads do seem to love it, though. I guess they like to picture themselves as the titular character or something. Dream on, guys.)
As his wife, Katherine, we have the always likable Julia Stiles, who I've been a fan of for a long time and always wondered why she didn't have a bigger career than she does. She seems legitimately smart and makes interesting choices, and yet her biggest hits are mostly enjoyable fluff like 10 Things I Hate About You and Save the Last Dance.
She's not above taking risks- witness her turns in O (inspired by Shakespeare's Othello), The Drowning or on Showtime's Dexter (for which she was nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe)- and yet, all too often she gets stuck playing the girlfriend/wife/random computer tech/etc.
Alas, Stiles doesn't have much more to do here, either- she's basically just doing what Lee Remick did in the original, which is to say she's fine, but nothing earth-shattering, performance-wise. The same can be said for Schreiber, I might add.
In addition to those two, there's a fine supporting cast, all of whom do what they can to flesh out the roles they have been given, even if they're also no better or worse than their predecessors. They include David Thewlis (Lupin from the Harry Potter series) as Keith Jennings, the photographer; Pete Postlethwaite (Inception, The Town) as Father Brennan; and Michael Gambon (Dumbledore 2.0 in the Harry Potter films) as Bugenhagen.
As the evil nanny, Mrs. Baylock, it's none other than Mia Farrow, best-known for her work with Woody Allen, to whom she was also married and later divorced in a mountain of scandal that haunts Allen to this day- for good reasons, I might add. The casting of Farrow is particularly clever, given her previous role as the titular character in the classic demonic horror flick Rosemary's Baby and her public image as one who is known for having adopted several kids over the years.
Last but not least, what's a new Omen without the creepy kid actor playing Damien? This time around it's Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick who hits the ground running at evil and doesn't even try to be cute, really, which even OG actor Harvey Stephens managed to do now and again in the original.
Speaking of Stephens, he has a brief cameo as a reporter in the remake, for those of you wondering what he looks like now. He's the one who asks "Was she on drugs?" in regards to the nanny that kills herself early on in the film. Interestingly, Stephens was later nabbed by cops for a road rage incident last year, which you can read more about here. I guess the apple didn't fall far from the tree in his case!
Fitzpatrick, on the other hand, unlike Stephens, has done alright for himself in the business, landing roles in decent mid-range films with excellent casts like Everybody's Fine (with Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell), Moonrise Kingdom (with Bruce Willis, from quirky director Wes Anderson), Before Midnight (with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) and The Dinner (with Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Rebecca Hall).
In addition, in lieu of original composer Jerry Goldsmith's death in 2004, composer Marco Beltrami was brought in to score the film, a definite step up from Jonathan Sheffer's in Omen IV: The Awakening. Not that Sheffer's work was bad, it just didn't grab me the way some of the music here does.
If you know your horror, then you know Beltrami. He's a regular in the genre, having scored The Faculty, Resident Evil, Underworld: Evolution, The Eye, Amusement, Captivity, The Thing prequel, The Woman in Black (as well as the sequel), World War Z, Carrie (remake) and collaborated with others on the scores for Halloween H2O, Don't be Afraid of the Dark, The Snowman and A Quiet Place.
However, he's probably best-known for his signature work with two celebrated directors: Wes Craven and Guillermo Del Toro. For Craven, he's scored all the Scream movies, Cursed, Red Eye and My Soul to Take; and for Del Toro, he's scored Mimic, Blade II and Hellboy.
His score here incorporates some of Goldsmith's beloved themes from the original film but most of it is distinctly Beltrami's with a sound that's all his own and quite different from the other movies in the series. I dare say it may be the film's greatest asset, especially as a lot of it was done scene-specifically, which is to say, he scored the film after it was done, specifically for certain scenes.
(In the past, composers would often just come up with a bunch of stuff for filmmakers, sometimes only with a script or a vague notion of what the vibe of the film was, and the directors would simply take what they wanted and edit it accordingly.)
As such, this may be the rare film score I would not only listen to independently of the film itself, but might actually prefer to listen to over watching the movie again. In other words, it's just great, even if it's not quite as radical as Goldsmith's score for the original.
Goldsmith's score was ground-breaking for the time, but has become a cliché, thanks to the overuse of its approach in horror movies since, with all the creepy chanting and such. To his ever-lasting credit, Beltrami does his own thing and the film's all the better for it.
The remake of The Omen isn't bad, just unnecessary, much like the added scene in which we see what happens to Robert Thorn's ambassador predecessor, who gets killed in a manner akin to the sort of thing that happens in the Final Destination series, but not as good. Of course, the original Omen series paved the way for such things, but that's sort of my point- the whole movie plays like a retread of something we've all seen before.
Especially since we have- in the original film. I mean, aside from the stuff I mentioned above, you might as well be watching the original, which, for me is the far superior film, anyway. I'll grant you that 70's films have a slower, more methodical vibe, and that this one moves a lot faster, but I kind of prefer that approach.
Even though I'm a child of the 80's, which is where the whole fast-moving Hollywood blockbuster mentality began in earnest, I kind of dig the fact that 70's flicks aren't above taking their time to let one get to know the characters, even if there are scenes in which not much happens.
They don't make a lot of movies like that anymore, which is truly unfortunate. (Richard Linklater is a notable exception, but I know people who absolutely hate his films, especially the "indulgent" Boyhood, which I just loved.) I like a film in which things are allowed to breathe a little more than a typical modern Hollywood film, such as the work of David Lynch, another director that divides people, in terms of loving him or hating him.
The Omen remake is never boring, to be sure, but it's almost exhausting at times, too. Director Moore, true to his name, seems to be determined to squeeze more and more into the frame as he can, filling it with odd visuals that are often a little bit too on the nose. Note the overuse of the color red, or the blown-out, blindingly white sets within the Thorn household, which are both used a bit heavy-handedly.
I did like the subliminal sixes in the wallpaper in Damien's room, though- which some might not even have noticed the first time around- see how much better subtle is vs. over-the-top?
For good measure, Moore also tosses in random shots of a hooded demonic creature, people in freaky masks (think The Strangers or the original Wicker Man) and people who just look freaky in general for no discernible reason, other than it's a horror movie, so there should always be something weird going on, right? As often happens in Hollywood, this is what results in hiring a non-horror director to do a horror film- they wallow in the clichés.
I mean, don't get me wrong- sometimes this can have unexpectedly solid results, i.e. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, William Friedkin's The Exorcist, or Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. But more often than not, a work-for-hire director simply emulates what has come before him, for better or worse. The Omen remake isn't bad, it's just nothing you haven't seen before- and done better.
I will say that some of the scenes are staged better here than in the original, such as the priest's impalement and the infamous decapitation. In one of the commentaries I listened to about the original Omen, one of the people complained about how fake it was that the rain storm came out of nowhere in the former scene. (Which was sort of the point, IMHO, as another of the commentators agreed.)
In this film, it's already raining when the scene begins, so it feels more natural, but Moore piles on as much freaky stuff into it as he can, not quitting while he's ahead. Random people run into the priest, someone in a red coat rushed by, spooky music plays, you know the drill.
That said, the impalement itself is quick, and done in such a way that the priest doesn't see it coming, as his vision is obscured until it's too late, whereas in the original he looks up at his impending doom, yelling for what seems like an inordinate amount of time when he could be moving out of the way. So, overall, it's a better scene, and the FX is stronger.
Ditto the decapitation, which retains its Rube Goldberg-style approach of one thing leading to another, which leads to another before pow! Off with his head! This time, the effect itself is gorier and much more realistic, yet still as over-the-top as the original. But here, Moore doesn't pile on, so it's the rare scene in the remake that actually surpasses the original.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the re-staging of other classic scenes. The scene with the nanny is oddly kind of funny- note the nutty "what was Moore thinking?" puppet reaction shot, which actually made me laugh, which is probably not what he was going for. I think.
Then factor in the approach to the hanging itself, in which he has the nanny crash down from the roof into a wall instead of through a window as in the original. Where it served to punctuate the surprise of the moment in the original and launch the party-goers (and audience) into a state of shock, here it muffles the result, resulting in more of a "meh" than freaking the viewer out.
Same thing with the zoo scene. I guess Moore wanted to up the ante with a bigger animal, courtesy of the giant gorilla in it, which is actually a guy in a suit. But he cuts away from the action, just as things are promising to get good, resulting in another "meh" moment, in which one wonders why they went to all the trouble of the gorilla suit, when it doesn't even crash through the glass in the end.
Contrast that with the similar scene in the original, where Damien and his mother drive through the Safari Park and are attacked by crazed monkeys. First of all, all the monkeys are real, so there's that. Second of all, the monkeys may be small, but they are definitely scary and the reaction you see from Lee Remick is 100% real, because she really was scared by their attack. That's why the scene works.
Moore seems to have reasoned- "How can I top that?" and what he came up with was to get a bigger monkey, as it were. But you can't go around hiring actual gorillas to bash into glass containers, so they had to go with a guy in a suit instead, which looks like...a guy in a suit. It's a cool suit, to be sure, but still a suit.
Even worse, Moore cuts away before the action really kicks in, making it feel like an interrupted sex scene. In other words, there's no climax, which is super frustrating. So yeah, Fox basically just spent all that cash on a gorilla suit for nothing. In the documentary, the guy playing the gorilla even says they sent him to Africa or wherever to study gorillas so that his portrayal would be that much more accurate! What a waste.
The rest of the big scenes from the original are basically just the same as they were, only shot slightly differently. So, not much to report on the church-going scene, the scene where the mom falls off the balcony (Moore makes the trike a scooter and the fishbowl a vase of flowers- red, of course), her subsequent death (Mrs. Baylock does the deed with a syringe instead of her going out the window, so it's another weird case of Moore showing unnecessary restraint) and the dog attack in the graveyard (though the scene is slightly more convincing than the original, likely due to better-trained dogs).
Moore does restore the final attack by the evil nanny to the scene near the end, with her continuing her pursuit of Thorn into the driveway and eventually getting run down by his car, which is how it was originally written. It's fine, but most of this stuff works better in the original film. As a result, this just feels more and more like the cash-in it was, rather than a fresh take on old material.
You can say that it has better pacing and that the look of the film is superior to that of the original and the effects are better, absolutely. (Save maybe that burnt priest, which is laughably bad- the rare case where the old-school FX is actually better.)
But does it offer anything truly worthwhile to the viewer who has already seen the original? Not really. In the end, if you're a die-hard fan of the series, you'll want to see it, but all others need not apply, especially if you've already seen the 70's version.
Thankfully, we won't be ending on such a bum note, as I have one more entry to go. In our final article, I'll take a look at Damien, the TV show spin-off which ran for one season on A&E. Was it that bad, or is it actually a diamond in the rough? Join me in a few days to find out!
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