Director: John Moore
Production Company: 20th Century Fox (distributed by)
Country: USA
Year: 2006
It was only a matter of time. Everything else is getting the remake treatment, so 30 years after the Oscar-winning original film, they finally get around to taking The Omen and giving a completely old spin on it. The cast they managed to get together was interesting, including Julian Stiles, Mia Farrow, Liev Schrieber, David Thewlis, Michael Gambon, and Pete Postlethwaite. It was written by the writer of the original. Scored by Marco Beltrami. Everyone behind it is talent in the absolute stratosphere. But is it any good?
Sometimes films surprise you. Remakes of classic horror movies are one of the few categories you think can’t. This one does, but in the worst way possible. It is, perhaps, one of the most bland, mediocre, and downright forgettable films ever conceived.
Firstly, Liev Schrieber is exactly the wrong actor for Robert Thorn. He doesn’t have any of the panic, any of the gravitas, any of the fear or worry or charisma that the part requires. He’s not a bad actor (his turn as Cotton Weary in the Scream films will attest to that, if nothing else) but here he’s just a bland blob on a boring body. He looks perpetually like he’s thinking about what to have for lunch until someone snaps him out of it, and he mumbles a line and stalks off to the next scene. On the other hand, David Thewlis is alive in every moment, and is by far the best thing about the film.
It’s not as if the film is completely awful. There’s the meeting between Thorn and Father Brennan under the bridge that has now been modified to remind one of a similar scene from The Matrix, giving a cultural recognition of importance to the scene. The death scenes themselves, whilst almost exact copies of the original with some little updates after thirty years, are cleanly executed. A few bits of camerawork are interesting, and the second half of the film goes all in on the blue filters which were all the range in the 2000s, especially in horror and gothic films, so we can at least see what’s happening in the night scenes. Seeing in the dark is, bafflingly, a plus this film has over modern horror films.
None of this makes it an interesting film. It follows all the same beats as the first without even an attempt to do something fresh. Because of this, it’s all so easy to forget The Omen is trying to do anything, to make one feel any kind of emotion. It’s better than some of the sequels, of course, but that’s not hard. Nothing is particularly awful, but nothing is particularly great, either. It’s just there, going through the motions to collect its paycheck and leave again. Everyone just wanted a cash grab, but making this film is odd when they could have simply re-released the original, got the same amount of money from the cinemas, and saved the production costs.
Rating: 4/10
Review by Kieran Judge
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