The Omen (2006 Remake)

The Omen (2006)
Directed by: John Moore
Written by: David Seltzer
Starring: Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick

The Omen (2006)

(15) Running time: 110 minutes

Reviewed by: Matt Wavish, official HCF critic

The problem with re-makes is all you do really is compare it to the original, and every so often one comes along that betters the original, The Omen however is not one of those. Where to start? First of all Julia Stiles is one of the worst actresses I’ve ever seen, the bloody dogs out act her. Damien himself is dreadful; he’s too much older and is not a bit scary. The disturbing thing with the original Damien is he LOOKED innocent, whereas this Damien seems to know what he’s doing and is intentionally snarling all the time and it doesn’t work.

The woman who hangs herself is appalling; in fact that whole scene is handled dreadfully. The monkeys (who attack from in the zoo home this time) are crap, and you can clearly see the big gorilla is a man in a costume. Liev Schreiber does a good enough job, in fact he’s very good but too young. The way he ends up being ambassador is dramatically changed for the worse, with the added 666 factor! Pete Postlethwaite looks terribly uncomfortable and out of place and I usually like him as an actor. His accent was awful. The only saving grace to this film is David Thewlis, one of the most underrated actors around today. He actually made the film a lot better and stopped me turning off as the troubled photographer.

This is a bad bad remake which is really unnecessary; it seems almost like an excuse to blame the problems in the world today on the coming of the Devil, and it really wants us to believe it too. All the clips of recent disasters are used to enhance this idea and to me just seemed daft and there was no need for it. If your gonna remake a film at least have some heart in what you’re doing, and don’t use it as your personal attempt to try and right the wrongs of today with religious ramblings used to much much better and disturbing effect in the original. Stay well clear.

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