I purposefully avoided the reviews because I wanted to know how bad The Omen Revisited would smell without being prejudiced by the bile of the critical mass. (To be utterly honest, I went in with middling hopes, thanks to the gorgeously minimalist trailer.)
Liev Schreiber, plumbing his Manchurian Candidate charisma, emotes and mopes as Daddy Thorn, followed close by Julia Stiles' dopey Katherine. Pete Postlethwaite plays priestly self-parody, while David Thewlis as paparazzi Jennings provides the film's gravitas--yes, that's right, Professor Lupin is the film's moral anchor. Mia Farrow is (looks?) wasted as the nanny. Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick is laughably creepy.
Paradoxically, the film follows the original far too laboriously to be truly gripping, with stretches of tedium to break up the monotony. The religious mumbo-jumbo is largely intact and only slightly updated. All the gory assassinations are here, some reworked, some rehashed, all completely over-the-top. When it deviates, though, it somehow screws up as well. The first evil dog Damien sees, for example, is a friggin' black German shepherd which drools harmlessly. The baboons--unnerving no matter the context--have been replaced by gorillas. The film's famed smile is cut too short, too, so it immediately fades from memory. What the hell?
Worst of the film's faults is its use of the original's cheesy poem, which I reproduce here to sum up my review.
When John Moore remakes The Omen,
Just a remake, nothing more,
When Liev Schreiber gets his gameplan
From a beardless Dumbledore,
When a brain flies toward the fairway
As the FX guy yells "Fore!"
Bring along your Breathe Right nose strips
'Cause you're in for quite a snore.
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