The Omen Review
By David Kempler
Damien is back and he hasn't changed a bit
I may look adorable but...
Damien is back, but it's a different cast than the one from the 70's, obviously. There are six actors portraying Damien. Four are infants. One is a two-year old, and finally there is Seamus-Davey Fitzpatrick as Damien as he begins his quest to take over the world. Fitzpatrick does a nice job reprising Harvey Stephen's version of evil incarnate.
When re-making a film, a director is faced with some hard choices. How does he want to go about putting his own stamp on it? How far should he stray from the original classic? Taking on a re-make is a tough job. John Moore does great work replacing Richard Donner's original vision. To be truthful it is really not a replacement. It's a devoted tribute to the original, with nary a difference at all aside from the new cast and the updates of technology found in our day-to-day lives. The first Damien didn't have video games and his parents Gregory Peck and Lee Remick didn't have cell phones.
Replacing the great Peck and Remick are the for the most part unproven Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles. Both are okay but neither can hold a candle to the original players. Mrs. Baylock, (Billy Whitelaw) the oh so evil nanny is now Mia Farrow and she does a bang-up job in the role. She is certainly as creepy as she should be. Interestingly, the other major role of the photographer, Keith Jennings (David Warner), is now manned by David Thewlis, who bears a striking resemblance to Warner, a nice spooky touch whether it be intentional or not.
In this new version of "The Omen" we certainly have a good film. Perhaps if I had never seen the original I would think far more of it than I do. As it unfolds and you experience the same exact scenes once again you can't help but switch back and forth from being immersed in the film and comparing it and the actors to the first group.
"The Omen" (2006) is definitely worth the price of your ticket but not much more than that. Considering how pointless most remakes are it's a big winner. But it is a remake so instead of taking us all the way to hell it only takes us to heck. By the way, for those of you who don't already know, the original film played a major role in American society. Before it, just about no one had ever even heard of Rottweilers. "The Omen" made it an incredibly popular breed. Another "by the way" is that Damien and I share the same birth date. So be careful with any of your negative comments directed at this reviewer.
