The Omen (also known as The Omen: 666) is a 2006 remake of the The Omen. The film is directed by John Moore and is written by David Seltzer. Principal photography began on October 3, 2005 at Barrandov Studios in Prague, Czech Republic. The film is part of The Omen series.
The Omen was released on June 6, 2006 (6/6/06), at 06:06:06 in the morning. This symbolically represents the number 666, which traditionally is regarded as the "Number of the Beast" according to the New Testament.
The Omen opened on a Tuesday in order to be released on June 6, and recorded the highest opening Tuesday box office gross in domestic box office history in the United States, by earning more than $12 million. The film was stated to have earned $12,633,666 on its first day, with the last three digits ending in the number 666. However, Bruce Snyder, Fox's president of distribution, said, "We were having a little fun" when referring to his studio's manipulation of the box office number's last three digits.[1] The film ended grossing US$119,498,909 worldwide.
Plot
Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber) is a high-ranking American diplomat, stationed in Italy. His wife, Katherine (Julia Stiles), gives birth to their first child, a baby boy who is stillborn. Katherine does not know that her child has died, and Robert is acutely aware that this news would devastate her. The hospital's Catholic priest, Father Spiletto (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), presents Robert with a way to spare his wife the anguish: another boy was born that night whose mother died during childbirth. Robert is convinced to take the baby as his own and never tell Katherine. They name the boy Damien.
Robert's career ascends over the course of the next five years. He is initially named Deputy Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and when the ambassador dies at 6:06:06 in a bizarre accident where an oil truck is spilled into his limousine and then is ignited when it reaches a cigarette, Robert becomes Ambassador and the family settles into a large estate just outside London. But disturbing events, all seeming to revolve around Damien, later occur. The most prominent of these is the hanging suicide of Damien's nanny, driven to do so by a demonic dog, at his birthday party. Soon afterward, Robert is in his office when his assistant informs him a priest named Father Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite) wishes to speak with him. The priest delivers a rather eerie warning dealing with his son's birth, at which point Robert has security escort him out. Soon thereafter, a new nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow), is hired and tells Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) that she's been sent to protect him. Tension between Mrs. Baylock and the Thorns rises when the nanny starts to make decisions against their wishes, including trying to keep Damien from going to church. On the way, Damien becomes terrified, screaming and screeching when they arrive, and adopting a large dog without their consent. A trip to the city zoo ends with primates going wild at the sight of the child. Meanwhile, a series of photographs taken by photographer Keith Jennings (David Thewlis) foreshadow a number of shocking deaths.
Father Brennan again speaks to Robert, and gives a prophecy saying Damien will kill anyone in his way. However, Father Brennan senses something evil right after their meeting and flees, attempting to seek shelter within a church, however the door locks itself. He is then killed when a large steel rod is struck by lightning, falls from the roof of the church, and impales him.
Katherine discovers she is pregnant but wants to have an abortion because she is afraid to have another child, due to Damien's abnormal behaviour. Shortly after this, Damien is riding his scooter around the second floor of their enormous mansion. He knocks Katherine off the stool she is standing on to water a plant, and she tumbles from it and over the balcony. As she barely holds on she begs Damien to help her. He does not and she falls two stories to the floor, breaking her collar bone and suffering from internal bleeding. Robert rushes to the hospital and is informed that she has lost the baby. Katherine awakens and tearfully begs her husband, "Don't let him kill me." Robert finally becomes suspicious that something is amiss with his son.
Fueled by the warnings given to him by Father Brennan and further information from Keith Jennings, Robert and Jennings go in search of Damien's real mother. After meeting a nun in Rome, he discovers that the hospital has burned down. Robert and Jennings go to a monastery in Subiaco and meet Father Spiletto, who tells them where to find Damien's mother. He finds the grave of Maria Avedici Santoya, Damien's real mother, in the old cemetery of Cerveteri, an Etruscan suburban town 40 km west of central Rome. When they open the tomb, they discover the skeleton of a jackal. In the neighboring tomb, Robert discovers the corpse of a human infant with a cracked skull. He realizes his biological son was not stillborn but was, in fact, murdered that night. He and Jennings are then attacked by hellhounds. After helping each other to survive, they are able to escape them.
Mrs. Baylock visits Katherine in the hospital under the pretense of delivering flowers and then injects Katherine's IV line with an air bubble. Katherine dies of an embolism. Robert is convinced that Damien is the root of these incidents, and decides to follow Brennan's advice and go to Megiddo and meet Bugenhagen (Michael Gambon). Bugenhagen tells him what Robert has feared all along: Damien is the long-prophesied Antichrist, and therefore must die. Robert Thorn refuses to kill his son at first, but sees a change of mind after Jennings is decapitated by a falling sign after telling Robert he will kill Damien if Robert doesn't.
Robert flies back to his home, finds Damien, cuts a lock of Damien's hair and sees a 666 birthmark. Suddenly, he is attacked by Mrs. Baylock. After a fight, he goes to a church to kill him on consecrated ground. Just as he is about to strike the blow, Robert is killed by an officer of the Diplomatic Protection Group while he is reciting the Lord's Prayer with his son struggling beneath him. Damien survives.
Damien watches his father's funeral while holding the hand of the President of the United States, who is Robert's godfather. The last shot of the film shows Damien turning around, looking directly into the camera and smiling.
Cast
Reviews
The film received a mixed set of reviews upon its release in June 2006, and subsequent reviews concerning the DVD release and TV broadcasts have been much in the same vein. James Berardinelli wrote "On every level, The Omen isn't just bad filmmaking, it's bad storytelling." Roger Ebert however gave the film "two thumbs up" praising John Moore for letting the strong story unfold itself rather than foregrounding visual effects.
Other critical quotes are as follows:
- "John Moore's remake - while arguably better than its source - can't help but feel a bit stale." - BBC fim review
- "This film is for people who've never seen the original, and who are easily scared by mediocre horror films"- Eric. D. Snider
- "Not since Gus Van Sant inexplicably directed a shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho has a thriller been copied with so little point or impact"- Rolling Stone
- "Director John Moore has added some creepy visuals and assembled an unusually strong cast for a horror flick."- New York Post
- "Competently made, and enjoyably played. But you do really end up wondering what the point was. Cinematic déjà vu is the most likely response."- Empire Magazine
Reception
- The film currently has a rating of 43 out of 100 on Metacritic denoting that overall the film has received mixed feedback or reviews of an average nature.[2] It has 26% on Rotten Tomatoes indicating that 26% of critical reaction was deemed positive, while 74% was seen as negative. That gives the film a rotten rating from critics with an average score of 4.6/10 amongst them.[3]
- It has also been nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor (2007) (David Thewlis who has also been nominated for his role in Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction)[4]
- Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick did pick up a Fangoriachainsaw award for creepiest kid based on his performance in the movie.
- At the box office, the film has a worldwide gross of $119,498,909 making it a modest success on a budget of $25 million. It finished as the 59th highest-grossing film of 2006, the 12th highest-grossing R-rated movie of 2006 and the 2nd highest domestic gross of The Omen series when adjusted for inflation. The 1976 original remains the top earner in the series.
- As of July 2009, it stands at #972 in the all-time domestic box office.
Differences between the 1976 and 2006 versions
- In the original, Damien knocked Katherine over the railings by bumping his tricycle into the chair she was standing on at the time. In this version, Damien used his scooter instead.
- In the original, there is no scene showing the death of the ambassador whom Robert succeeds.
- In the remake, recent events were purported to fulfill Biblical end-time prophesies, such as the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the Indian Ocean tsunami and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
- In the original 1976 film, Robert finds out about the death of Father Brennan via a newspaper from a mysterious caller on the telephone. In this remake, he finds out from a news website from a hyperlink sent by Tom via e-mail.
- In the original, during the early stages of Katherine's suspicions concerning Damien, she becomes irritated by him playing with the balls on a snooker table and asks Robert to have him removed from the room. In this remake, however, it is Damian's noisy games console that causes Katherine's annoyance.
- In the original Katherine is pushed out of a hospital window by Mrs. Baylock instead of dying from an embolism when Mrs. Baylock injects air into her IV as in the remake.
- Katherine, played by Julia Stiles in this remake, has 2 vivid nightmares during the course of the film. In the original, there are no such scenes.
- In the original film, Keith Jennings is decapitated by a piece of glass which catapulted off the back of a truck. In this version, he is decapitated by the top bar of a metal sign when the screw is knocked out causing it to swing down.
- Mrs. Baylock dies when Robert stabs her in the neck and shoulder with kitchen utensils in the original. Here, he runs her over with his car. This was the original intended ending in both the book and original film, which featured as a deleted scene in the 30th Anniversary DVD edition.
- The nanny who commits suicide at Damien's Birthday Party sees a black Alsatian in the distance and falls into a trance. We never see the Alsatian for the rest of the film. In the original, the Nanny makes eye contact with a Rottweiler who later becomes Damien's protector in the house with Mrs. Baylock.
- In this remake, Kate and Damien visit the Zoo as part of a school trip. In the original, this scene was just a family outing. The animals distracted in this remake were species of monkey and gorilla. In the original, Giraffes and Baboons were the main animals who reacted to Damien's presence. Also noted is that Kate and Damien are not seen in their car as opposed to the original where most of the horror took place.
- Objects of a red color were designed for this film to signify danger. Such items in this remake include flowers, a coat and a balloon.
- The first meeting of Father Brennan and Robert Thorn in the original took place in Thorn's Office but in this version the meeting took place in the lobby of the Embassy. The second meeting also was in a different environment as the original took place at a Rugby match in Windsor whilst the remake decided to make this scene take place at an Opera event.
- In this remake, when Father Brennan is impaled by the church spire, shards of stained glass also fall and embed in his face. This does not happen in the original.
- In the original, when Father Brennan and Robert Thorn meet, Brennan tries to tell Robert that Damien's mother was a Jackal, but is cut off. In the remake, Father Brennan completes his sentence.
- In the original, Katherine comforts Damien when the Nanny commits suicide. The remake reversed the parent roles as Robert shields Damien from the tragedy instead.
- In the original, the soundtrack, (which won an Academy Award for 'Best Score') uses Gothic songs that strike terror into the viewer. In this version, however, the soundtrack plays a far smaller role.
Connections to other films
DVD and Blu-ray
The film was released in the US on Region 1 DVD on October 17, 2006.[5] It was released in the UK, on a Region 2 DVD on October 23, 2006.[6] It was released in Australia, on a Region 4 DVD on March 7, 2007.
The film was released on blu-ray on Nov 14, 2006.
References
External links
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The Omen Series |
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| Original Films |
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| Remakes |
The Omen (2006)
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| Other films |
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| Characters |
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