The Omen (2006)

Directed by John Moore. Starring Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Mia Farrow, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Predrag Bjelac, Amy Huck. [R]

Needless, badly-directed redo of The Omen tells virtually the exact same story as before—original scribe David Seltzer receives sole writing credit despite having nothing to do with this version!—and knowingly telegraphs all of the “big” scenes as if expecting everyone in the audience to be familiar with the thirty year-old biblical horror staple. One key bad decision was removing the cherubic “innocence” of the knee-high Antichrist (here, Damien’s cold glare and scowl make it look like he knows exactly what he’s doing); another was to have all of the death scenes either directly cop from the original or borrow from the Final Destination franchise’s playbook of elaborate, Rube Goldberg-esque machines. Richard Donner’s 70s production was anything but subtle, but nothing compared to how screamingly obvious every crass technique and self-aware performance is here; to such an inflated degree, in fact, the filmmakers practically exhibit contempt for the viewers. Not even the stunt casting of “Satan’s baby mama” Mia Farrow as the nanny of the damned pays off in any kind of way. Presumably greenlit for production just so the studio could capitalize on the release date of 6/6/06 (what will those ad wizards come up with next?). Harvey Spencer Stephens, who played Damien in the first film, cameos as a reporter.

31/100