Too old for the new market -- Omen
Omen
Genre: Horror
Director: John Moore
Cast: Leiv Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Seamus Davey Fitzpatrick
Storyline: Just the same old arrival of the anti Christ.
Bottomline: It is very difficult to understand why this version of 'Omen' was produced in the first place.
While it aspires to be a contemporary spin on the old tale, `Omen' returns to every little detail from the 1976 film starring Gregory Peck and Harvey Stephens. As a result, a whole lot of situations that seemed genuine in the original seem ridiculous in the new one.
Why doesn't Father Brennan think of an email to warn Robert Thorn furnishing all details of evil in his house? Or catch him on his mobile? The photographer manages to reach the ambassador on his mobile after all. Also, the world today is a lot more sceptical than it was in 1970.
Anyone who walks up to an ambassador and says his wife is in danger would be promptly arrested. People are less likely to believe in spook tales and Anti-Christ arrival theories today.
Director John Moore fails miserably in blending details of the two worlds that have prompted this film: the old subject matter of 1976 and the new world market of 2006.
Pop-horror films of today usually shock their audience with tense jump scenes and sudden music/sound effects. It is indeed unfortunate that John Moore had to resort to these cheap gimmicks in a movie that once spooked and scared us, without any of these.
Mediocrity in excess
The gruesome deaths in this version do make you jump, but do not chill you to the bone. The background score in the original was spine chilling. Here it tries too hard but doesn't work, forcing Moore to use jump scenes. And then, there are the actors who further ruin the movie with their laboured effort.
The actors, but for the one who plays Mrs. Baylock, seem sandpapered; the biggest let down of the film is Damien (Seamus Davey Fitzpatrick) who looks obstinate rather than evil.
He wears the look of a baby that wants to poop and ends up looking bratty and cute, rather than diabolical. Julia Stiles could find herself at home in chick flicks, this is just not one.
Liev Schreiber lacks the charisma and screen presence that Gregory Peck commands and that really weakens his character. The fact that a star of the calibre of Gregory Peck was beginning to get scared of a kid like Harvey Stephens was the clincher in the original.
When the kid in the climax here says: "Daddy, don't kill me," you just don't feel the angst of the man about to kill a kid. Nor do you feel a bit sorry.
Here the casting is poor, music mediocre, the devices employed to scare, cheap, the story-telling itself very dated for the era it is set in and the soul presence of Evil incarnate completely missing. Also you find no new twist to the old tale.
So, what was the point of this remake?
SUDHISH KAMATH
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