The Omen(2006 / R)
Having never seen the original Omen movie I cannot comment on how this film stacks up against it. All I can say is that I liked this movie more than I thought I would. The reason I never saw the original Omen was because the concept just never interested me. Whoo the antichrist is born! Scary! A little kid is evil! How terribly frightening! You see? Evil kid movies have never been my bag of tea... I never cared for the Children of the Corn movies, Never cared to watch Village of the Damned, I dunno are there others? The Brood? Havn't seen it.
As to why I consented to see the remake of the Omen... it was the trailors for the film... they just made the movie seem very creepy, and hinted at some actual scares. The trailor made me think that maybe there's more to the movie than JUST an evil little boy named Damien.
The crux of the story is that the antichrist has been born. Through some coersion the child is forced upon the U.S. Ambassador to Italy and his wife. The husband agrees to this as he is told their own child was stillborn. The wife has no clue that this is not her own... at first.
So Damien grows into a creepy little boy who doesn't talk much and constantly tries to kill his mother.. think a less garrulous, older, less gay, and more sinister version of Stewey Griffin. There are strange deaths that occur all about Damien and a local photographer thinks the pictures he takes foretell the manner in which these people died. The mother knows something is not right with the child and the father starts to do some investigating into the childs origins with the help of the above noted photographer. The investigation leads to a final showdown betwee father and son (of Satan) which I will not give away in case you are like me and have not seen the original.
All in all I truly enjoyed the film. I wasn't distracted by the performances, and the kid they found to play Damien did a fine job I thought. The mood of the film was very dark and foreboding and there were some genuine scares in the movie. At one point the lady sitting next to me actually let out a piercing scream at one of these moments. I wanted to scream at her to shut her big fat mouth.
|
