The Omen - Remake (1 Viewer)

[Amy Mormino]

I haven't seen this yet, but enough people saw it on Tuesday to make it the highest-grossing Tuesday gross ever. When people complain why Hollywood keeps making remakes, remember that it is the public that is embracing movies like this.

 

[MattFini]

I went to see The Break-Up on Tuesday night and my local theatre was literally PACKED, wall to wall with teenagers who were going to see The Omen. The theatre even had to turn away about thrity kids in line becuase it was sold out.

I really feel like the primary audience for these remakes is today's youth...the kids who don't give a rat's ass about a horror film made in 1976. I don't see many serious film fans paying to see this thing (please note that I said many...I don't want to offend anybody who did pay to see it) and Hollywood knows which audience is lining their pockets thanks to these rehashes. The Omen was aggressively marketed on MTV and MySpace and just look at the casting: two very young, recognizable leads who've been in many teen films in the past.

Hollywood knows what they're doing and they understand now more than ever that there's an entire youth culture that will eat up whatever garbage they remake and put in theatres.

 

[Amy Mormino]

I'm not sure that I agree that the only reason these movies make money is because of the youth market. Why do these recent youth-oriented remakes consistently make more money than youth-targeted original horror films?

Compare the gross for something like the When a Stranger Calls remake to Stay Alive. Either the name brand is attracting people or they are choosing past films with better concepts than today's writers can come up with.

 

[MattFini]

^ Amy, fair point. I will say one thing though. For whatever reason, Stay Alive's marketing paled in comparison to that of When A Stranger Calls. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony still hasn't broke even on Stranger thanks to their advertising. I remember that I couldn't watch TV without seeing an ad for that movie and there has to be some direct correlation between that and its box office. Stay Alive, I'm sure was promoted, but I saw very little of it (not saying that's why, just that more than likely, Stranger was advertised more).

Horror films have always appealed to youth, my biggest gripe is that Hollywood is taking the best stuff from the previous generations and dishing it out to today's teenagers without giving them many originals to call their own.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I don't get hung up on the idea that the youth are to blame for the state of today's cinema, i'm not one those guy's who complains that today's movies are all "junk" and i'm not against remakes, some are actually good if people would give them half a chance before judging them.

I don't let it bother me because the fact is there ARE good horror films that are made now and there ARE good movies in general made now, hell, there's a whole awards ceremony dedicated to those. Teens have been going to horror films since their inception, and they go because the movie looks fun, that's why they go, to have fun and that's how it's always been.

Kid's going to see The Omen today is no different than kid's who went to see The Blob back in the 50's. It's unpreductive to try to measure the cinematic intellect of the public at large by way of the attendance of youth to horror films.

The fact is, it's a different time, kid's are different now then they were 20 years ago and the films that we consider classics are not effective on them because they have been desensitized, that's just the way it is, it's useless to complain. In a nutshell, The Exorcist may be the scariest horror film of all time to us adults, but a teen today is more likely to find it slow and lame. It sucks, I know, but that's the reality.

 

[MattFini]

John, I can agree with most of what you said. I try and tell myself those very things all the time but I simply can't help but get pissed when I check horror news sites and see three or four remakes announced within a matter of days. I get worked up, I can't help it. It'll probably lead to high blood pressure very soon.

But speaking personally, my gripe is with the fact that I simply think these remakes are largely horrible films. With the exception of The Hills Have Eyes 2006 (a movie I fully expected to hate due to the fact that the original is one of my favorites), I think that all recent remakes play out as bastardized versions of the originals.

Also, I don't blame kids. Kids will flock to anything that looks scary or entertaining (which thankfully helped make Hostel a big hit). I blame the studios for going back to existing material again, again and again in recent years. As a fan I get frustrated. I understand that remakes have been around nearly as long as moving pictures have, I'd just like to see fewer old favorites rehashed for a generation with too few original classics to call their own.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I hear you, Matt, but speaking for myself, I just appreciate the good horror that we do get now and there has been some great one's in recent years IMO. Moviemaking is something that is beyond our control, the studios are going to make whatever makes them money, so it isn't worth worrying about something that's beyond our control because it'll only lead to grey hair.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

The only thing we can do is wade through the onslaught of endless remakes and bad horror until we finally come upon those one or two gems in the pile.

Remakes are hit and miss with me, I personally LOVED the remakes of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, and I also thought that the recent remake of The Poseidon Adventure was great.

As for The Omen, well, I will admit that I am mildly curious now that Ebert and Roeper have given it thumbs up, but it'll wait until dvd.

 

[Blu]

If anyone is sick of the remakes, just stop going to them.

If they don't get your money then eventually they will quit making them when they aren't profitable.

 

[Lucia Duran]

I haven't seen this film yet, so I cannot comment on it. I would like to comment on the whole kids and films today discussion.

The truth is we are always going to have the same argument about " well back in my day" or "When I was growing up".... it's a never ending cycle. Movies were too gory when I was growing up according to my mother and I'm sure her parents felt the same way. Of course now we probably all think that movies today are so "in your face" with gore and that todays movies are more violent and scary. Kids will always love going to scary movies, good or bad and they will always think that their generation of horror films are better or far superior (for the most part).

I think people tend to forget that movies are for fun and entertainment and not always about intellectual conversation and debate. Sometimes, you go just for the excitement of having something pop out of the dark and scare the pants off of you.

That said..... I like some remakes and dislike others. I am looking forward to seeing the Omen.

 

[Tino]

I saw it.

Completely unnecessary and inferior to the original in every way.

You may enjoy it if you haven't seen the original but I was pretty bored throughout.

:star::star:

 

[Mikel_Cooperman]

They are, which is ashame because often times the original is allot better but people dont want to see the original. Why would anyone want to see a movie, in this day and age, that is 30 years old.
I too agree with the people in this thread that think these remakes and gore fests often survive and gross lots of money because of the youth market.

 

[Robert Ringwald]

As a big NON fan of the recent remakes that have invaded the theaters... I must say I was surprised to find this wasn't bad at all. It wasn't particularly revolutionary nor did it do much to try to improve on the original. Richard Roeper pretty much sums it up..."It’s like hearing a great cover version of a classic rock song. They do such a great job. The art direction is gorgeous in this in its own haunting way."

I haven't seen the original in years, and while it's certainly a better film, they could have done much worse with this remake.

I agree, there really aren't any new classics for this generation... but think about past decades and the number of good original horror films from those ones... I'm sure we can all agree that those decades were riddled with countless imitations and pathetic rip-offs. The biggest difference with this current trend is that the rip-offs are flat-out remakes... even the post-Halloween runoff of slasher films tried to have an original concept...

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that THE OMEN is one of the few decent remakes to come out in recent years. Although I'm not a fan of the "loud booming music with a scary flash to scare the audience" technique, I'm happy to report that it happens very little in this one as well.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Would I have liked this film if they beefed up the characters of the parents more? Probably. As-is, tonally the film is good, not great, and the energy level is a little off. The updates of the interpretation/meaning of the signs from the disasters of the past 30 years lend a little more "scare" cred into the biblical mythology, but in another 30 years, will there just just as many horrific disasters that could be interpreted yet again as the signs for the coming of the beast?

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.

 

[Shawn_KE]

Liked the original and found the new one boring.

 

[Michael Allred]

I went to see "The Omen" this afternoon (amongst the throngs of kids to see "Cars") and basically, if you've seen and enjoyed the original, there's not much of a reason to see the remake. If you saw and hated the original, there's still no reason to see it hoping it was improved upon. They did nothing new with the story, not quite the scene-for-scene "Psycho" remake but it was all very familiar territory. I'm not saying it was a bad movie, it wasn't. Watchable? Certainly. A fair way to pass some spare time but it's nothing you should rush to see.

 

[Jeremiah]

Saw The Omen yesterday, it wasn't bad, but I did get a little bord, and it wasn't worth the $9.50 a ticket to see.

 

[Colton]

Not to hijack the thread, but does anyone have a link to the old OMEN 2 trailer? I remember it had a crow in it and some cool music.

- Colton

 

[Holadem]

This sums up my feelings as well. As I was watching this very well made, nicely atmospheric, yet ultimately uninvolving movie, I was thinking this is the perfect example of what separate the Shyamalans and Kings of the this world from the rest of the pack: They write characters you genuinely care about. This is an intimate story, yet the plight of the parents did not really came through. I liked and appreciate what they tried to do here (the pace and atmosphere were impeccable) but wanted more.

--
H

 

[Brett_M]

I saw it yesterday. I thought it was okay. I'm a huge fan of the original and when I heard about the remake, I was excited by the cast. I like John Moore's films and thought they had the chance to make a good remake. They didn't. Richard and Katherine's relationship was not believeable. I didn't feel for them. Damien was all wrong. He was too menacing. It was overdone. The cheap thrills only made it worse for me. The original was a psychologcal thriller. The best parts of it rely on music and mood (Goldsmith's score is one of the best ever). The new flick tries to scare us with jump-cuts and loud sound -- that's totally weak.

It's slick and the production design was great but in the end, if you can't make a connection with Thorn's anguish, what's the point?

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Well, I said that it would wait until the DVD and so it did, I got it as part of The Omen Collection box set and checked it out over the weekend (great set BTW). The film wasn't bad at all, one of the higher calibre of remakes made with obvious care with very good performance from it's adult leads.

You'll notice I said "adult" leads because contrary to what I said earlier in this thread about him not being scary enough, the kid who plays Damien here goes for the sinister far too much, in every scene he's in he's got this intense scowl plastered across his evil little mug and it takes away from things a bit IMO. The brilliant thing about Harvey Stephen' performance in the original is that it was played more innocently, like he was completely oblivious to what he was or what he represented and the mayhem he was causing.

This new kid, in one of the most disappointing shots in the film, looks at his scooter and seems to make a very conscious decision to scoot his mother over the banister thus making the scene less effective than when Lee Remick took the same dive in 1976.

Another addition that screamed "Hey this is a remake for the MTV crowd" are a couple of corny nightmare sequences that are good for a jolt but again take away from the elegance of the material...it didn't need them to be effective. I really liked Liev Shreiber as Robert Thorne, he did a wonderful job IMO and Julia Stiles was a competent Katherine although I think that perhaps another actress could have done a better job. But, as much as I liked Shrieber as Thorne I just have a soft spot in my heart for the way Gregory Peck delivered his lines, my favorite being "These are KNIVES, he wants me to STAB HIM!!"

Production design was emaculant, appropriately dark and foreboding in all the right places and with a very nice updating of the death scenes we're all so familiar with including a state of the art decapitation scene for the photographer Jennings!

Last, and certainly not least, the music. I can't stand Marco Beltrami, i've never liked any score he's ever done and this is no exception, maybe i'm too hung up on Jerry Goldsmith but it seems that Beltrami wasn't even trying here, thinking back on this film I can't recall a single chord of his music. I'm not suggesting that they should have recreated Jerry's score but come on, at least get someone in there who doesn't sound like he's pulling the music out of some pre-existing library like Beltrami seems to have done here.

Overall, not a bad remake at all, pretty much a shot for shot deal as has been said, but ultimately it feels like Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho, an interesting experiment but can't touch the original and is, in the end when all the raising of hell has ceased and the light's come up, unnecessary.