It was always going to be one hell of a job – take a renowned seventies classic, with more credibility than you can shake a crucifix at and a cult following larger than the twelve tribes of Israel, and remodel it for the I-pod sporting, post-millennial, post-Iraq generation of recent times.

As both a keen enthusiast of the horror genre and eschatological myth (and being a writer with a decidedly invested interest in the latter), I awaited the release of this movie with no small amount of excitement. In my humble opinion, the 1979 David Seltzer original stands up as one of the greatest horror movies ever made, an intelligent, understated masterpiece that has, without doubt, stood the test of time.

Fast forward to the present day, with an apparently ideas-famished Hollywood hell-bent on recreating almost every single magnum opus from the last thirty odd years – from Amityville to Poseidon and all points between – one could almost be forgiven for approaching this new version of The Omen with a certain wariness.
The trailers promised much – the brief, slick flashes of music-video shock overlaid on a script of verified depth and reputation – and the billboards looked appropriately spine-tingling, a crimson-drenched echo of the original poster.
Adding these factors up, John Moore’s (Behind Enemy Lines, Flight of the Phoenix) version was set to be either a brilliantly scary, heart stopping experience or complete and utter garbage.

In the end, The Omen 2006 turns out to be neither of the above, and that, in a nutshell, is precisely the problem.

First off, the movie looks good. One cannot fault the production, which follows the original template to the letter in a near-perverse kind of sycophancy.
For those who missed out on the story first time around (and you missed out on a lot), accidental American ambassador Robert Thorne (here played by Scream 3 beefcake Liev Schreiber) relocates with his young wife (Julia Stiles Save the Last Dance) to London with their newly born son, Damien, where a strange and grisly sequence of deaths surrounding the family soon point to the fact that the child they are raising has a lineage stretching back to the very bowels of Hell.
Young Damien is in fact, no less than the son of the Devil, the Antichrist incarnated on Earth to inaugurate Armageddon, the apocalypse foretold in the Biblical Book of Revelation. Through a series of seemingly inexplicable events, the ambassador and his wife are plunged into an eerie confrontation with evil, where their atheistic beliefs are tested to the limit. The family ultimately find themselves hijacked wholesale by Satanic designs, a devilish plot to position the growing Damien at the political power centre of imminent-future Earth, perfectly placed to bring the entire world beneath a Satanic regime. Eventually, it comes down to the doubting Robert Thorne, assisted by endangered journalist (David Thewlis Basic Instinct 2) to oppose the Antichrist’s rise to domination.

A terrific premise, you might think, and you would not be wrong. The original movie set audiences (not to mention the Christian right) aflame upon its 1979 release. The original movie quickly became surrounded by its own urban legends, with mysterious deaths and strange coincidences occurring among the cast and crew, which any movie-buff will happily tell you. The original movie became a genre benchmark, an authentically disturbing work of celluloid art, and a spirited take on Biblical fable. To recreate a film of such vast influence and unquestionable repute could never be anything other than a tall order, and perhaps, an undertaking destined to fail.

Despite all that, the creators of The Omen 2006, seizing upon the choice release date of 06/06/06 (the actual 30th anniversary of the original movie), rolls up its sleeves, dusts off its rosary, and makes the attempt. For that effort alone, perhaps we should first give the devil his due, and focus on what went right.

During the film, there are some legitimately unsettling dream sequences (a masked Damien, a skull-faced acolyte, and an agitated Rottweiler providing some perfectly timed thrills) and some slick, well-executed (excuse the pun) set pieces – most notably the fresh spin on the famous decapitation scene and the weathervane-impaling of Pete Postlethwaite’s conscience-harassed priest. The locations are shot with impressive clarity and the updating of the late seventies era to the technology of modern day is carried out with directorial expertise, with some apt footage of the Twin Towers attack and the recent Asian tsunami. The movie provides some additional background into Damien’s demonically-arranged entrance into the Thorne family, and there are some interesting scenes with the Vatican and their rather ineffectual reaction to the Antichrist’s sudden arrival.

The chief problem with this movie lies in the acting. One would expect an innovative take on the old script, with a new interpretation of the characters, and a far wider scope, considering current world events. Sadly, both these elements are completely wasted here, with the undeveloped, better-looking cast doing little more than reprising the former roles by rote. Schreiber is hardly convincing as a political big-shot, and on more than one occasion, can clearly be observed presenting a more-than-dodgy impersonation of Gregory Peck. The same can be said of Thewlis, who is literally acting out Keith Jenning’s turn in the original. Mia Farrow as Nurse Baylock is not bad, and appropriately sinister, but compared to the threat-beneath-the-skin performance of Billie Whitelaw, it just doesn’t cut the mustard. Julia Stiles as anxious wife Katherine is a little on the dull side, and her depression over and dread of her own child is not believable considering the terrifying circumstances, nor contrasted to Lee Remick’s authentically frantic rendition.

Worst of all her, sorry to say, is Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Damien himself, who spends so much of the film being wilfully ‘evil’, intense frowns et al, that you end up wanting to send him to bed with no supper, let alone run away in terror. What made the original film work so well was Damien Thorne’s (then played flawlessly by Harvey Stephens) seeming innocence. Unfortunately, and unwisely, that chilling naivety has been pushed aside in favour of hammy histrionics and pantomime villainy. The audience of The Omen 2006 will have absolutely no sympathy for this little devil, and consequently, the whole film falls down as a result.

Overall, The Omen 2006 is pointless. It simply did not need to be made. A special edition director’s cut of the original, released upon modern cinema-goers, would have had far more impact, and in an age that prides itself on CGI perfection, that is a pathetic admission indeed. Hollywood marketers, given enough time, money and rope, have sold the very soul of this story down the river, and my advice to anyone interested in this movie remains as it ever was: rent the original DVD, turn out the lights, and bask in a true work of cinematic genius.

Damien may have come to herald the End of the World, but based on the uninspired endeavour that is The Omen 2006, one is left hoping that a distinct lack of bums on seats reflected in box office sales may finally herald the end of the Hollywood remake.
I watched The Omen 2006 with a young friend who has never had the pleasure of watching the 1979 original, and as a long time fan of that film, hearing her disparaging remarks about the remake as we left the cinema made me feel that the reinvention of this superlative celluloid fiction is nothing short of sacrilegious.

© JWBennett


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Sorry, typo - for 1979, please read 1976!