Thursday, April 16, 2020

The Omen Remake

The Omen (2006)

Runtime: 110 minutes

Directed by: John Moore

Starring: Julia Styles, Liev Schrieber, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Mia Farrow

From: 20th Century Fox

The impetus behind seeing a remake some may have forgotten was even a thing: a few days ago I was looking at my collection of Blu-ray discs. In a separate section is all the box sets; one of those is an older 20th Century Fox release of the original three movies and the remake, instead of the made for cable Omen IV: The Awakening, which I saw parts of many moons ago. As the first three were watched then reviewed by me in 2018, glancing at it made me realize... for the sake of being a completest, might as well see something I've never heard great things about.

After seeing the film... it is not a Xerox copy of the original like Van Sant's Psycho was to the Hitchcock classic; yet, it is nothing more than a modern retelling of what Richard Donner did back in '76 to the point that the guy who wrote this was not credited as the WGA ruled it was too similar to the OG script from David Seltzer, which is why Seltzer was credited instead. Only a few ideas are added, and they were not great ones... pointless brief dream sequences being the chief example. Otherwise, you are better off seeing the Gregory Peck movie; nothing about this movie was better than that. The cast is fine and has familiar faces all over... unfortunately there is no Peck to lend any gravitas to the proceedings and this has a moment of truly awful CG; I mean, it was almost SyFy Channel terrible.

As for Damien here... I'll echo someone else here who stated he looked more like Alfalfa in a theoretical 2006 reboot of The Little Rascals! The time he's on screen he's not terrible... just not as good as what Harvey Stevens did back in '76. As for Mia Farrow being in this: a “Ha! I saw what you did there” casting which was more “cute” than seemingly the right person for the role of Mrs. Baylock. Even the score takes cues from what Jerry Goldsmith composed; what Marco Beltrami composed is not bad-unfortunately, hearing that made me realize that Goldsmith's bombastic flourishes were the right choice for a film revolving around The Antichrist. It may be kind to give this an OK rating; personally, I thought it was an easy movie to get through and nevermind how pointless it seems, at least it is not a travesty like Van Sant's Psycho, last year's Black Christmas or the 2005 The Fog. Plus, the director being John Moore gave me no confidence as he was the “auteur” who gave us A Good Day to Die Hard. I suppose that he can create something alright if he closely follows a movie that is very good.

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