OMEN. An Unnecessary Remake of a Classic Horror

The idea behind making film remakes is almost as old as cinema itself: money, money, and more money. Almost 20 years ago, however, alongside that age-old motive, another one appeared in the form of an unusual date: 06/06/06. No reasonable Hollywood producer could let such an opportunity slip by, so the idea of premiering a film with an apocalyptic–satanic theme was only a matter of time. It has long been known that Hollywood suffers from creative impotence, and since in recent years the risk of failure has also grown, they decided not only to rely on a tried-and-tested theme, but on a ready-made script from decades ago.

Unfortunately, fate decreed that the choice fell on an exceptional work—one of the greatest achievements in the history of horror cinema: The Omen (1976) by Richard Donner, from a screenplay by David Seltzer.

The remake was about as necessary to The Omen as Van Sant’s Psycho was to Hitchcock’s Psycho. But it happened. As a fanatical admirer of the original, I would love to write that the 2006 version was a failed attempt, but in this case I must, with some pain, admit that an outright condemnation would be as unfair as it would be greatly exaggerated.

The most important positive, which cannot be ignored, is the fact that unlike many other, currently fashionable remakes, in this case the script was basically left unchanged. Its author remained David Seltzer, and the changes are purely cosmetic, which means the film retains both the pacing and the core story of the original. While it’s hard to point to other distinctive qualities in its favor, the result is respectable—a solid piece of craftsmanship on a decent middle level, enough to say it does not desecrate the memory of the original from thirty years earlier. This by no means suggests it is free of flaws. The most important of them, leaving the strongest dissonance long after the screening, is the casting of the leading roles.

With the memory of Gregory Peck as Ambassador Thorne and Lee Remick as his wife, it is hard to immediately accept Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles. Schreiber can hardly match Peck’s acting charisma. The relatively young Liev neither looks nor behaves like a diplomat. Although he tries hard, the viewer has the impression that at any moment he might pull a submachine gun from under his coat and start shooting. Julia Stiles, spared excessive makeup this time, is in turn too young and too emotionally disengaged to convincingly play a loving mother.

A pity, because the casting of the supporting roles turned out to be spot on. David Thewlis as Keith Jennings (originally David Warner)—the unlucky photojournalist—fits perfectly, and the haunted priest Brennan is another gem in Pete Postlethwaite’s catalogue of memorable roles (originally Patrick Troughton). For me, however, the biggest surprise was Mia Farrow’s casting as Mrs. Baylock. Anyone who saw the original knows that Damien’s nanny is arguably the most demonic figure in the film—perhaps even more so than the Antichrist himself.

I admit that in the context of this very character, the casting audacity of the creators of this version of The Omen at first pinned me to my seat. Not because Mia Farrow struck me as a bad choice, but because at that moment it became clear to any horror fan which famous predecessor the filmmakers were referencing, and I found that a brazen overreach. After a moment’s reflection, however, I concluded that it took no small amount of courage to make such an obvious allusion to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, which for nearly forty years has stood as an unrivaled genre model for this type of production. Even if the allusion seemed somewhat misplaced and decidedly overdone, Mia’s appearance as the Antichrist’s nanny must have sent a shiver down the spine of anyone with even a passing familiarity with the genre’s history.

Fortunately, the film avoided narrative surprises, though the relatively unknown director John Moore unfortunately did not spare us “enhancements” in the form of a few brutal scenes and visions absent from Donner’s version. I will chalk this up, however, to an attempt to adapt the film’s visuality to the expectations of a modern American audience accustomed to shock effects. The original Omen had one more element difficult to replicate, which the new director failed to deliver—the atmosphere of dread and menace permeating every minute of the film. An atmosphere built not with sudden, brutal effects, but subtly spun from the plot, scene by scene, until the dramatic finale.

I still maintain that Donner’s near-masterpiece neither needed nor needs any remakes. Nevertheless, it would be unfair to say that Moore’s imitation is a bad film. Yet from the very start, it was clear that years later, when anyone recalls The Omen, no one will remember that on the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the third millennium, a film premiered that tried to live up to it.