Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Well, The Omen isn’t by any stretch of the imagination terrible, but it also isn’t anywhere near good either. It’s a competent film, one made by people who pretty much knew what they were doing technically, but alas made a pair of tragic mistakes. The Omen is a house of cards built upon shaky choices, and no matter how effective certain aspects of the film are, they all ultimately fail because of them. This was always going to be a tough sell - not to get people into the theatres but to convince them that this was any good.
There are two chief problems that make this movie fail as badly as it does. First, and least of the two, is the way they went about making the film. They decided to almost perfectly adapt the film from the original. Now normally that’s exactly what us geeks call for, but The Omen is really a very special case. It’s one of the few horror films that has become something of a cultural phenomenon. Everyone knows who Damien is, whether they’ve seen the movie or not. Young children with behavior problems are often joked about as having a 666 tattoo or are actually referred to as Damien. In fact, the entire mythology laid out by the film has become accepted by society and modern popular Christian mythology as what the Anti-Christ is actually supposed to be.
When The Omen was originally released, it was a spooky, creepy little mind fuck. You watched as the mythology unfolded and questioned along with the characters whether this cherubic, yet creepy as hell, little boy really was the son of the devil. This time around, since everyone knows the story – as well as the mythology - director John Moore doesn’t ever try to conceal that fact. Rather, he relishes in it. He lets Damien clearly be the son of the devil from the start.
Imagine if someone decided to remake The Sixth Sense 20 years down the road, but knowing that everyone knows Bruce Willis is dead, lets him do creepy, ghostly shit through the whole film. So you simply sit and watch and wait for Bruce Willis to figure it out for himself. And wait, and wait and wait, and then realize, Christ almighty this is a long fucking movie. And nothing is really happening. Well, things are happening – but you know them already, not because you know the film by heart, but because you know the story by heart. Whether you’ve ever seen the original or not. It is simply that ingrained in our pop culture.
The second and most profound mistake of the Omen is the casting of Damien himself. You see, the original is still effective. It’s still scary. I know this because for years as a video store clerk it was my #1 recommendation for all the giggling 17 year old girls that would come in to my store in pairs asking “What can we rent that is really scary?” They’d seen all of the other classics. Chainsaw, Nightmare, Friday the 13th. They wanted something creepy. “You ever seen the Omen?” I’d ask. “Isn’t that the one about the son of the devil?” “Yup.” “No. Is it scary?” “You bet your sweet illegal ass it is.” They’d always rent it. And those girls would always come back days later. Most of them claimed they slept with the lights on for days afterward. Some couldn’t even finish it. “Do you have anything…less scary?”
What works in the original, to this very day, is just how creepy that little bastard was. He was so innocent, so seemingly incapable of evil…in appearance. Until that final shot. That was the money shot. That was the really evil shot. There’s just something about a solid, well chosen ‘fucked up kid’ that can ratchet up a horror movie to truly epic levels. I mean, The Shining is a scary fucking movie, but those Twins…it was those twins that haunted our nightmares. Here, in Omen: The Remake, their Damien was clearly chosen because he was the most evil looking fucking kid they could find. Not a sweet, disturbingly innocent child, someone who just looks absolutely sinister. This kid looks like he’s ten years and a Morrissey record away from being king of the Emo Kids. And his look just doesn’t work.
But what makes this kid the absolute worst choice is his acting. Imagine if you will playing with your 6 year old nephew or son. You decide to play X-Men. “Okay, you’re Professor Xavier,” you say. “Now show me how to use your mental powers.” The boy smiles, then furrows his brow. He seems to be straining, like he’s passing something bigger than himself through his system. That’s what Damien does every time something EVIL happens. He furrows his brow and tries to look menacing. And it’s funny. Really funny. Every time he did this, the audience laughed out loud. Laughed. Out loud. At what was supposed to be the creepiest part of the movie. Everything else after that, no matter how competent, no matter how well done, simply falls apart.
And the rest of the film isn’t really all that bad. Despite all the bitching I keep hearing that Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles are no Gregory Peck or Lee Remick, they really do fine jobs in their roles. They’re both accomplished actors and sell the Thorns. But the back up cast is really wonderful, a truly depressing waste of talent. Pete Postlethwaite and David Thewlis both are extremely solid in their roles, and Michael Gambon does well, despite being wasted in something that becomes comedy – as he is required to speak very dramatically about the kid you’ve been laughing at for two hours. But Mia Farrow simply owns as the nanny. She really brings a truly wonderful creepiness to the role that I honestly feel is the one of the only things this film has to offer.
Some of the jump scares work, and there’s some nice cinematography here and there – even the newly added dream imagery is somewhat effective (if occasionally nonsensical.) But over all, everything is simply wasted as the lack of a creepy Damien ultimately drives the film to be two solid hours of tedium. It’s one of those films that is somewhat okay while you watch it, but afterwards, slowly over the course of a few hours seems to get worse and worse. There’s plenty to nitpick, but really, it’s not worth it to list all the crappy little things that just didn’t seem to work or make sense. Harry brought a handful of them up in his review. But they’re the least of the problems this film suffers from. It’s just boring, and was a complete waste of my time. Not recommended for anyone, unless you actually can’t find anything better to do.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will.
Massawyrm
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