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The Omen

Why?

By PETER KEOUGH | June 7, 2006

1.0 Stars

WHAT'S SCARIER?: Damien, or the thought of more soulless remakes?

Gus Van Sant might have had theoretical reasons for his painstaking remake of Psycho, but what’s director John Moore’s excuse? The cars are newer, the effects more gruesome, the cast and the mumbo-jumbo updated, but scene by scene this is almost identical to Richard Donner’s campy, creepy 1976 original. Fans of the latter might find amusement in detecting the differences in this impaling or that beheading; first-time viewers won’t be so lucky. References to Revelation, 666, and the Antichrist have so saturated pop culture over the past 30 years that Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber) now seems inexcusably slow in catching on to Damien, his secretly adopted son. After the five-year-old puts his mom (Julia Stiles) in the hospital, Thorn at last sets off for Rome and the Holy Land. The truth that a genre film like this has to offer is an insight into its audience’s fears about the present and the future. My own fear is more soulless remakes.

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