The Omen

Director: John Moore
Screenwriter: Dan McDermott
Starring: Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Pete Postlethwaite, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Michael Gambon
Running time:110 mins
Certificate: 15

Unbeknown to his wife (Stiles) an American diplomat (Schreiber) agrees to bring up a different baby when their own is stillborn. All goes well for a few years until the family move to London and strange and nasty things begin to happen around young Damien who, as a strange priest (Postletwaite) would have the unhappy dad believe, is the spawn of Satan.

John Moore's remake of the 1976 horror classic is entertaining enough, though you have to wonder what exactly he was trying to achieve by reinventing the story. Richard Donner's seminal film was important and well-loved in its genre and attempting to retell the story is a brave thing to do. Unfortunately, it has proven to be a rather pointless thing to do at the same time.

The film's main failing, and it's quite an important one in a horror movie, is that it's very rarely scary. Granted, there are a couple of throwaway jumpy bits but there's no sense of psychological chill throughout the movie, which is particularly surprising considering what the father must do to his acquired son. Son-of-Satan Damien, originally played effectively by Harvey Stephens, is here remarkably ineffectual, actor Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick looking eternally bored and depressed.

The best performance comes from Mia Farrow, who is probably the creepiest element of the movie as Damien's demented nanny. Most of the performances are enjoyable enough, apart from the chronically-miffed portrayal of Damien and a strangely two-dimensional turn from Liev Schreiber as his unfortunate father.

Moore takes several recognisable parts from the original and churns them out by rote, but it comes across in such a way that there is no soul behind it - nothing is interestingly expanded upon, merely regurgitated. Meanwhile, the added touches are nothing special, and the inclusion of footage of the 9/11 and Asian tsunami tragedies heralding Satan's coming is inappropriate.

The makers have, perhaps wisely, decided not to try to top the lauded decapitation-by-glass sequence, but unfortunately the reinterpreted version of events is unimaginative and fails to come close. The music, a strong point of the original, has not been recreated, though the sound in the new version does help to create what suspense there is.

A remake of a much more worthy movie, Moore's The Omen is temporarily enjoyable, but instantly forgettable.