It is complete. Around twelve years ago my girlfriend at the time brought me The Omen: Pentology box set from HMV. This five film collection included the four original films (The Omen, Damien: Omen II, Omen 3: The Final Conflict, Omen IV: The Awakening) as well as the 2006 remake, and at three o'clock this morning (at the time of writing) I finally got around to watching that remake. I reckon that if I had seen this back then I would not have appreciated it as much, but watching The Omen remake now, I got a real nostalgic hit from a film that is extremely early 2000's in feel. I will try and keep spoilers to a minimum, but part of this review will be comparing it to the classic original.
Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber - X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Scream), an American ambassador is devastated when he learns that his child has died after complications with its birth at a Catholic hospital in Italy. A priest there has a proposal for him however, he says that a woman also at the hospital recently died after the birth of her healthy son, and that to save Robert's wife, Katherine (Julia Stiles - Orphan: First Kill, Save the Last Dance) the heartache of learning her child has died, should claim this child for his own. The man decides to go along with this, but little does he know that the baby is actually the Antichrist, the son of Satan who is prophesied to bring doom to the world of man. It is on the child's fifth birthday that events begin to be put in motion, and it isn't long before Robert has reluctantly teamed up with press photographer Keith (David Thewlis - The Sandman TV series, the Harry Potter series of films) in order to investigate for sure if his son really is a creation of Hell, after being warned by Father Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite - Inception, The Usual Suspects) about the deception.
This John Moore (A Good Day to Die Hard, Max Payne) directed horror remake plays it very safe with the story and how particular events play out, so much so that the poor screenwriter wasn't even credited, due to his screenplay being so similar to David Seltzer's (who wrote the screenplay for the 1976 original). Part of the reason I had left this so long to watch is that I didn't want vivid memories of the original clouding my opinion of this. That worked to a degree, I knew all the story beats, but I couldn't really recall how the original looked. Some things are done better, some less so, and unifying this is the peak 2000's feel. Firstly, some of the death sequences look fantastic, better than the original.
Bizarrely, the most memorable death scene for the original film (a character getting pinned to the ground from a falling piece of church masonry) looks quite bad here, due to the obvious replacement of the actor with a fake body that the camera lingers on for too long. Thankfully other death scenes are better replicated, a person compelled to commit suicide has an identical scene but it looks more visceral, and the iconic decapitation scene delighted by occuring in a slightly different way than in the original.
The 2000's seemed a bit of a dark time for me in regards to horror films, it felt like every classic movie was getting a subpar and needless remake, and I'm sure I would have felt scorn for this back then (I do recall seeing the trailer at the cinema). In modern day however I am at the stage in my life where I feel quite intense nostalgia for bygone decades, and seeing Schreiber and Stiles (someone I've always had a crush on) in a movie together was delightful, it took me back to the feeling of that decade. Being set in that time period there has been some alterations to make this more current, such as 9/11 and the Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003 perhaps tastelessly being injected into some of the portents for the rise of the Antichrist. My biggest issue came with some of the actors chosen to play the roles. Now, I think David Lewlis was simply stunning in The Sandman, his acting there was very impressive, but here...not so much. Whether it was the actor or his direction, his portrayal of a press photographer is extremely generic and stereotypical, with the man distractingly always chewing gum and forever squinting his eyes. I struggled to take this character seriously, which is a problem when he becomes an essential side character. As for the previously mentioned Schreiber and Stiles, I could watch both of those in anything, even if here they aren't particularly memorable characters. Other notable actors includes Mia Farrow (Rosemary's Baby) as the evil nanny, and Michael Gambon (the Harry Potter series) in a very brief appearance, and of course you have Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick as the five year old Damien, someone who at the very least has a decent ability to give a malice filled stare. The ending shot may be identical, but it is just as effective here.
Demonic possession films are one of my favourite horror genres, so this is kind of in a similar ballpark. It is a film that has improved with age, if only for it being such a snapshot of the time period it was created in. On the other hand, being so extremely similar to the original it felt a bit pointless, I've never really understood remakes that try and be identical to the film they were based on, I feel if you must make a remake then at least put your own darn spin on it! Complaints aside, I did enjoy The Omen, not essential by any means, but it was entertaining enough to watch.
SCORE:
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