Movie Review: The Omen | wtsp.com
St. Petersburg Times film critic Steve Persall says the second coming of The Omen doesn’t quite capture the tension of the 1976 original, but it’s still creepy.
The Omen is a fairly satisfying remake simply because it has a neat story, a baby switch arranged by the devil to place his spawn in a position to politically nudge us toward Armageddon. The 1976 original made the creepy-kid angle zing, as The Exorcist did a few years before. Any misbehaving child still jokingly referred to as ldquo;Damienrdquo; or ldquo;pulling a Linda Blairrdquo; is proof of their lasting effectiveness.Director John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines) was smart to work almost directly from David Seltzerrsquo;s original screenplay, with the writer adding a few updated touches here and there. This movie isnrsquo;t for viewers who loved the first Omen, but for audiences who might flip the TV channel past a movie starring old-timers such as Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. They also deserve a chance to experience the shock and dread baby boomers did 30 years ago on their terms. The new Omen mostly accomplishes that.
But not without a few cheats demonstrating how movie horror has changed. Scenes like a monkey zoo going bananas over Damienrsquo;s presence or a graveyard scene in which Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber replacing Peck) realizes his biological son was murdered and Damienrsquo;s real mother was a beast arenrsquo;t improvements. They disregard the originalrsquo;s slow-building tension, instead using loud sounds and sudden movement to make us jump. It works, but it doesnrsquo;t last long.Seltzer adds a new, early murder to explain how Robert becomes U.S. envoy to Great Britain, plus an interesting comparison of disasters such as the Columbia explosion, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina with prophecies from the book of Revelation. We get a little more inside information about what the Vatican thinks of Damienrsquo;s birth, rather than one eccentric priest babbling about the Antichrist.
Obviously, the murders committed in Satanrsquo;s name are more graphic than before, highlighted by a twist on the decapitation of a photojournalist (David Thewlis) helping Robert to discover the truth. The impaling of a priest by a church spire adds a few shards of stained glass for extra oomph. A dropped shoe from a hanged corpse is a nicely sick touch. The lone death that fails to impress is subbing an intravenous air bubble for an old-fashioned toss through a window several stories up. Overall, gross-out fans will get what theyrsquo;re paying for.
Purists will quibble with the fact that Julia Stiles as Damienrsquo;s distraught ldquo;motherrdquo; canrsquo;t manage the eroding sanity of Remickrsquo;s performance. Ditto for newcomer Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick as Damien, whose sneer and furrowed brow look more like pouting than an instrument for the end of mankind. Both are too lightweight for their roles. On the other hand, Schreiber mdash; although certainly no Peck mdash; and Thewlis approach the material with suitable gravitas to keep the fantasy interesting.
Theyrsquo;re counterbalanced by the scenery-chewing tactics of Mia Farrow as Damienrsquo;s evil nanny and Pete Postlethwaite and Michael Gambon as expositional priests. Farrowrsquo;s casting is a brilliant inside joke; the mother of Rosemaryrsquo;s Baby raising another hellion. Playing sweet, shersquo;s a caricature of her personal life as adoptive mother several times over. Going crazy, she goes over the edge, chasing a car with an ax and shrieking. Itrsquo;s an artistic mistake that somehow plays fine, a description for just about everything in The Omen.The Omen
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