The Omen

The Omen

Directed by John Moore

Written by David Seltzer

20th Century Fox

Expect to be startled a couple of times, and that's it, in this remake of the 1976 Richard Donner flick that starred Gregory Peck. And that's all the positive I have to say about this movie.

In this rehash, a U.S. ambassador (Liev Schrieber) and his wife (Julia Stiles)--tangent for a minute--did you ever picture the 39-year-old Schrieber with the 25-year-old Stiles? Talk about an odd pairing. Anyway, the ambassador and his wife have a boy, an evil boy, an antichrist boy (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, who looks like he was carbon copied from Max Pomeranc of Searching for Bobby Fischer--I guess Cameron Bright has outgrown the creepy kid role or wasn't available after doing 4 movies this year already). Things strange and bad start happening whenever Damien is near--like monkeys go crazy and nannies start slinging themselves off of mansions, opening the door for the evil Nanny McPhee, Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow), to step in and protect Damien. Meanwhile, there's a priest (there always is), played by Pete Postlethwaite, who expects people to just buy what he says when it sounds crazy from second one--and he does himself no favors by being mysterious and unexplanatory. A paparazzo (David Thewlis) has been taking some intriguing photographs and eventually gets the ball rolling on what needs to be done--to kill the boy!

There are a number of things to hate about this. The way the movie doesn't build any creepiness and just goes for really, really cheap scares--quick cuts and out-of-nowhere attacks. As much as I love Julia Stiles for the fresh face she brings to the big screen--she's not a very good actress. I hate priests in movies who babble tons of nonsense and figure people will just go along with it. I hate it when right in front of your nose, you know you have a kid who isn't quite right (the kid never speaks...never speaks), and nobody thinks anything is wrong until the story dictates that they must. I hate it when horror movies take you away from horror to find explanations of plot and so forth. In short, this movie sucks big time.