>>REVIEW
THE OMEN
STARRING Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber
DIRECTED BY John Moore
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Repent, ye sinners, for the end is at hand!
Or so I was hoping after sitting through about 90 minutes of the 2006 remake of The Omen. Not that it was unwatchable, just boring. At one point I considered throwing my coffee at the other guy in the theatre just to see some action.
The most inspired thing about the movie is the advertising campaign behind it. In the days leading up to the release, the marketing team filled freeways across North America with billboards ominously depicting the mark of the beast, 666, with, of course, the release date, June 6, 2006 (6/6/06), which is undeniably good use of a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to create word-of-mouth buzz. Apparently the studio even went as far as to fly planes towing ominous banners near a beach in Los Angeles, resulting in the aircraft getting escorted away by a USAF fighter-jet. Brilliant marketing.
But once the veneer of advertising hype is removed, you are left with a remarkably average, word-for-word remake of the 1976 original, complete with identical plot, characters, and a total lack of meaningful innovation. This begs the question: why bother with a remake at all?
The story is about a wealthy, high-profile American ambassador to Great Britain named Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber), and his wife Katherine (Julia Stiles), who discover that their child Damien is the anti-Christ.
While the original film successfully combined believable characters and an eerie atmosphere to make a very credible horror-thriller, the remake relies heavily on cheaper techniques like fake-out dream sequences, scenes that make you jump and people’s faces turning scary.
Director John Moore, whose previous credits include such forgettable films as Flight of the Phoenix and Behind Enemy Lines, redelivers the tale without a trace of style.
Schreiber (Scream) plays Thorn, but comes across wooden in his attempt to fill the big shoes of the original lead Gregory Peck. Stiles plays the poor, tortured mother with a degree of forced intensity that falls just short of believable.
Heed my omen – rent this movie, if you must, but stay away from the theatres. |
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