The Omen (2006)

Why did this need to be remade? The original was perfect. What we get here is virtually a shot for shot remake with more gore (not only did the priest get impaled by the lightning rod, but he gets skewered by broken glass as well) and some more cheesy visual techniques added in (the camera shake when Liev Schreiber sees David Thewlis get decapitated was so damned silly). Julia Stiles is totally miscast here, while Schreiber sleepwalks through the whole flick. Only David Thewlis, Mia Farrow and Michael Gambon seem to give a crap about their performances. Even the kid sucks as Damien. Plus there's plenty of visual goof ups too, like the boom mic being completely visible in certain shots as well the gun debacle in the finale (Thorn gets shot by a cop with a handgun, then after a cutaway shot we see the cop lowering a massive smoking semi-automatic machine gun). A pointless remake.

1 out of 5


*written 12/9/06