Written by: Susan Granger
www.susangranger.com

As a critic, I've been wrestling with reviewing classic remakes. Is it fair to contrast the ‘new' with the ‘old,' particularly when the original version is easily available on video?

In this case, I think so, because the reason for a remake should be either to improve a flawed film or to bring new/different insights. Yet little has been changed from the 1976 thriller about the coming of the Anti-Christ, personified in a young boy living in England.

The story begins in Rome as U.S. diplomat Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber) learns that his wife Katherine (Julia Stiles) has given birth to a stillborn child. Rather than tell his wife the truth, Thorn listens to a priest who begs him to accept newborn Damien, whose mother who died in childbirth, as his own. Soon after, Thorn becomes Ambassador to Great Britain but, within several years, there are bizarre consequences. Damien's nanny hangs herself at his fifth birthday party and boy's presence panics primates at the zoo.

Enter Damien's new nanny, sweetly smiling Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow), a menacing apostate from Hell who is sworn to protect the boy. Alerted by a priest (Pete Postlethwaite) and convinced by a photographer (David Thewlis), Thorn understands the demonic "666" prophecy from the Book of Revelations.

Like Gus Van Sant's remake of "Psycho," director John Moore so slavishly adheres to the original that this becomes a bland, senseless rehash. And the kid (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) isn't even scary! Jerry Goldsmith's theme with its ominous Latin chants set the creepy tone, while Marco Beltrami's score is just redundant.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Omen" is a copycat 5. Bottom line: Lightweight Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles cannot replace the gravitas of Gregory Peck and Lee Remick.