The Omen (2006)

We close out our focus on the Omen series with the latest in the hit and miss series. I saw this movie originally when it came out on June 6th, 2006. I also seem to remember enjoying the movie at the time. Unfortunately I can't say that this is the case anymore.

Why a remake?
Remakes are inherently lazy. Upon viewing this movie with fresh eyes, I think this has to be one of the worse offenders I have seen in the last few years, and I've seen a lot of them. In fact! Lazy screen writing calls for a lazy portion of this review. Thanks to someone with too much time on their hands, I present a side by side comparison of the original movie with it's remake:

The Omens

This is way too many scenes that are almost mirror images of each other. On the flip side though, it's pretty much a no brainer why you would make this film at the time they did.

Marketing.

Films don't often have to use timing to increase their marketability, but this one was all over it. Not everyone was even as used to the constant barrage of remakes like we get now, so going to see the Omen on 6.6.6, that was an easy choice for me at least and my reviewing counterpart as well.

Anything good about this movie?

It's well cast. Nobody really appeared like the were phoning it in.

The death's aren't very original, but they look good and are somewhat gory.

The intro to the film talking about the prophecies using real life footage was well thought out.

That's about it.

What's not so good?

Mostly just the fact that this is way too similar to the original film. I believe that the screenwriters had a real opportunity with this one. Some people would likely call sacrilege if you mess with the original mythos of the film, but in this case why not try to go for the gold and give people something new to chew on. None of the sequels to the original film really got it right (in this reviewers opinion) so I think they would have benefited more from trying something new.

One thing I can't neglect to mention, is they did try one small new addition that almost every single new horror film relies on, and that is the jump scare. I can't get an exact scene, but this will give you somewhat of an idea:

This betrays what the original film was about and doesn't add anything new except to make it seem modern in all the wrong ways.

This movie also left behind one thing that was good about the original, and that had to do with the feeling from the mother of Damien feeling as if she had not given birth to that child and the hatred that existed. It's hinted at in the most minute way, but they really left that aspect of horror on the cutting room floor, and this movie suffers from it.

This film, in my opinion was like a one shot deal - you were going to get those who were going to see it on the first day, and then after that it was going to fall flat. This movie was an absolute chore to watch, even by remake standards.

You would do yourself no favor by watching this, you would likely be better off cleaning your house. Alternatively, you could make a deal with the devil and ask that the next time they do this, they try a little harder and make something that wasn't likely to end up in the bargain bin after a month of release.

The Omen remake gets 1.5 pissed off cats out of 5