Dutifully just in time for Halloween arrives this year’s
remake of The Omen, and it probably works
better as a rental, the type of thing you can pop into the old DVD player Halloween night and
pause to get up and pass out candy without feeling too disrupted upon return to
the couch. A marketer’s dream, The Omen
somewhat wanly taps into the rising tide of religious-themed, quasi-end-time
menace that’s fashionable in an anxiety-laden culture driven by the twin engines
of terror and war — all without really legitimately earning any of its feeling itself.
Robert Thorn, a young, well-heeled governmental attaché, and the godson of the
President of the
After the stillborn death of their infant, Robert accepts another child without
telling his wife Kathryn (Julia Stiles), and they lovingly raise Damien (Seamus
Davey-Fitzpatrick) as their son, with Robert of course closely guarding this
aforementioned secret. It’s not long before Robert is elevated to the post of
Ambassador to
when his boss dies in a freak accident.
a turn for the worse when Damien’s nanny hangs herself in front of a crowd at
his sixth birthday party. Father Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite), a mysterious but
traumatized priest, shows up and forecasts more horrible things for Kathryn,
Robert and others; Damien, he says, is the Antichrist, the human spawn of
Satan. Increasingly disconnected from and frightened by her son, Kathryn slips
into a depression. These events coincide with the Thorns’ hiring of a new
nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow), as well as the realization by photographer
Keith Jennings (David Thewlis) that distorted photos he’s taken may serve as
indicators of deaths both previous and impending.
As directed by John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, The Flight
of the Phoenix) and updated by David Seltzer, the writer of the original
film, The Omen delivers a few
effective blows of menace, but ultimately leans too heavily on the theoretical
injection of viewers’ own beliefs and end-time apprehension to supply its
dread. This is evident in everything from the absurdly baroque touches that
stud threatening montages which are completely emotionally unconnected to the
narrative to a third act steeplechase that only bothers to sketch out the
barest details of a conspiracy that birthed Damien and brought him to Robert
and Kathryn’s care. In recreating two of the original’s big five set pieces, retaining the
primeval nature of other deaths and fetishistically replicating its source
material’s meticulous production design, the movie most heartily evidences a
desire to be “all evil to all people.”
presented Damien as a sullen, neatly coiffed, little brunette kid — the
smallest member of the AC/DC dress-alike fan club — and this movie duplicates
that sedated character bit. Yet if, as the film suggests, all that we see here
is part of the Devil’s sly campaign of ascendancy — prologue to an apocalyptic
showdown on Earth — wouldn’t it be more chilling to contrast such murders and
death with a (somewhat more) charming countenance? The power of the Devil,
after all, lies in charismatic appeals to vanity, or at least an ability to lie
low and dormant (e.g., the phrase, “like a snake in the grass”) until proper
opportunity. Given the circumstances of mortal dispatch on display in The Omen, there’s no persuasive reason
to believe a sympathetic yet secretly malevolent figure could emerge. With a
remote stare, malevolent pout and about eight lines of dialogue in the entire
movie, Davey-Fitzpatrick’s Damien is a cipher for immoral wickedness — evil as
muted petulance.
Omen is a blank canvas that draws its anxiety from viewers’ own sense of
impending moral peril. A few good jolts are meted out, and if one allows their
mind to wander and indulge the narrative possibilities the story flirts with,
it’s certainly easy to muster some disconcertment. Mostly, though, the film’s
solemn creepiness is hermetically sealed off from its more direct, goosing
passages, proving that evil can be just as boring as saintliness.
Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, The Omen comes with a robust Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound track that will help give you a jolt or two when properly pumped up. Editor Dan Zimmerman and producer Glenn Williamson join director Moore for an audio commentary track, detailing production trivia and on-set hurdles they surmounted in on-the-fly fashion. Next up is a 37-minute documentary on the making of the movie, laden with cast and crew interviews. A look at Marco Beltrami’s score gets 10 minutes of love, and the prevalence of the devil in modern times gets its own 22-minute featurette, which stitches together interviews with theologians, professors and the like in what amounts to a half-assed version of any given History Channel-type documentary on the same subject. Two extended scenes, meanwhile, offer slightly gorier takes on two of the deaths herein, along with a slightly differentiated ending, theatrical teaser trailers and the like. C+ (Movie) B
(Disc)