Liev Schreiber and a terribly miscast Julia Stiles take on the lead roles of Robert and Katherine Thorn who unwittingly become parents to the spawn of Satan which causes no end of heartache and tragedy.
The cast are all normally very good (apart from Stiles who rubs me up the wrong way) but are reduced to spouting laughable dialogue in a number of dramatically over the top set pieces, which fail to hold your interest the majority of the time.
The ‘accidents’ really are all this film has going for it, apart from Marco Beltrami’s score and I’m pleased to say that David Warner’s infamous decapitation has been slightly re-jigged and works equally as well as the original.
The Omen is essentially a series of clever accidents strung together by boring back story and ‘plot development’ that falls far too short of the mark. The amount of fifteen year old girls present at the screening I attended, coupled with the fact that a number of adults had conversations the entire duration pausing only to see the death scenes, will probably be a good indication for you of who the intended target audience is.
OVERALL SUMMARY
The Omen definitely deserves a place in movie history next to The Fog and Psycho remakes. Let’s face it folks, we probably won’t see a really good horror film until October now….have a great summer.
