Movie Maven

The Omen
Starring: Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Mia Farrow
Written by: David Seltzer
Directed by: John Moore
Official Website

Photo by: 20th Century Fox

I'll start by saying that I was pretty sure this movie was going to suck. All the reviews were indicative, and the director was the guy who did Flight of the Phoenix. But I went to see it (not on 6/6/06, unfortunately it was sold out) hoping that it would be scary. Really scary. I can handle a bad horror movie if it frightens me. I hadn't been sufficiently scared by a contemporary film in a long time, and I was jonesing for that sense of unease, for the feel of my heartbeat fueled with adrenaline, a good gasp and jump. I wanted to sleep badly that night. I saw the original Omen when I was 10 or 11 and I still remember it fondly as one of the most frightening films I'd ever seen. I am a fear junkie and I was hoping for a fix.

Too bad it just kind of sucked.

This movie was not scary. I couldn't believe it. It was like it wasn't even trying. There were a couple moderately good jumps- choppily edited visuals of Damien in a scary mask, holding a rope, predictable but still effective. But the rest is hideously dull and flat. Damien's father and a reporter (David Thewlis) go to a cemetary populated with upside-down crosses and a giant black dog attacks them. Oooohh, subtle. Julia Stiles, besides looking far too young for the role as Damien's mother, is wooden and stilted, a far cry from Lee Remick's nuanced and brittle portrayal in the original. Even Schreiber, who's usually consistently good is beaten down with bad dialogue. The movie klunks along with predictability, like a badly oiled machine. It seemed like Moore had maybe seen the original Omen a few years ago on HBO and had a vague sense of how it was supposed to go. It had all the plot, to be sure, but none of the atmosphere, or sense of unease of the first.

The worst part, of course, is the actor who plays Damien. Child actors are difficult in the best of situations. Apparently the director chose not to tell Davey-Fitzpatrick that he was supposed to be playing the son of the devil- I'm not being glib either, they really didn't tell him. They apparently didn't want to "freak him out" (a perfectly legitimate thing when dealing with a six-year-old) but how is the poor kid supposed to play somebody evil when he doesn't know that he's supposed to be evil? Suddenly it's very clear why Damien never really looked "evil-" he just looked kind of sullen and frustrated. Less antichrist and more "a bully stole my tricycle."

The two who actually manage to pull their weight are Thewlis as reporter Keith Jennings and Mia Farrow, playing the satanist nanny Mrs. Baylock. They both liven up the joint and bring a surprising amount if nuance to their limited roles (and both of them bite the dust in fabulously nasty ways.) But they are the exception, not the rule.

The Ring Two. The Haunting. The Grudge. All sucked. All were re-makes or adaptations. But they were all scary, primarily because they managed to catch the subtle facets of horror. They had timing and a profound sense of what images truly keep us up at night. The Omen had none of this- only a trudging sense of obligation to re-make a perfectly fine film. Not to expand upon the ideas within it, or tell the story with a different perspective, but to make money and capitalize on a fortuitous date.

There are only so many ways Damien can frown.