The Omen (2006 film)
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| The Omen | |
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 "The Omen" film poster |
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| Directed by | John Moore |
| Produced by | John Moore Glenn Williamson |
| Written by | David Seltzer (1976 screenplay) |
| Starring | Liev Schreiber Julia Stiles Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick Pete Postlethwaite Mia Farrow David Thewlis |
| Cinematography | Jonathan Sela |
| Editing by | Dan Zimmerman |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | June 6, 2006 |
| Running time | 110 Minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Omen (also known as The Omen: 666) is the 2006 remake of the 1976 horror film 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 (this is disputed by several theologians, however).
The MPAA rated this film as R for disturbing violent content, graphic images, and disturbing sequences.
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 USA, by earning more than $12 million. Eerily, the film 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]. As of August 13th 2006 the worldwide box office has totalled $118,354,959.
The film was released in the UK on Region 2 DVD on October 23rd 2006[2]. It was released in the USA on Region 1 DVD on 17th October 2006[3].
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[edit] Plot
Robert Thorn is a senior diplomat in the United States federal government, stationed in Italy. After two miscarriages, his wife, Katherine, gives birth to their child, a stillbirth. Katherine does not find out that her child has died, and Robert is acutely aware that this news would devastate her.
However, the hospital's priest, Father Spiletto, presents Robert with a way to spare his wife the anguish: another boy was born that night, but his mother died in childbirth. Robert is convinced to take the baby as his own and never tell Katherine. They name the boy Damien Thorn.
Robert's career ascends over the course of the next five years. He is initially named Deputy Ambassador to the United Kingdom, but the ambassador dies at 6:06:06 in to a freak traffic accident. He thus becomes ambassador and the family settles into an estate outside London. But disturbing events, all seeming to revolve around Damien, occur. The most prominent of these is the hanging suicide of Damien's nanny at his birthday party. A trip to the city zoo ends with the animals going into a murderous frenzy and Damien himself becomes hysterical during a drive to church. Meanwhile, a series of photographs taken by photojournalist Keith Jennings foreshadow a number of shocking deaths.
Having become suspicious, fueled by the warnings given to him by Father Brennan, Robert goes in search of Damien's real mother. Jennings also accompanies Robert as he feels that he has become part of the situation (after one of the photos he took foreshadows his own death). However, he discovers a carcass of a jackal-like doberman canine. Beside the grave is the 'child' of the jackal (which should be Damien); Robert discovers a corpse of a little infant with a cracked skull. He realizes his real son was murdered that night.
Afterwards, Katherine is murdered by Mrs. Baylock when she visits with the pretext of Damien wanting to deliver flowers to his mother. The nanny, who is also evil, injects Katherine's IV line with an air bubble; Katherine is very weak from the accident and sedatives and dies while struggling to stop Baylock from killing her. Robert is convinced that Damien is the root of these incidents, he finds out that his concern is warranted after a visit to a priest in the Holy Land: Damien is the long-prophesied Antichrist. Robert Thorn decides to kill his son in a church, by means of stabbing him with the seven Daggers of Meggido, in the shape of a cross — the only weapons in the world able to harm the Antichrist. Unfortunately, Robert is killed by an Officer of the Diplomatic Protection Group, attached to and trained by a Specialist Firearms Command team at the instant at which he is reciting the Lord's Prayer with his son struggling beneath him. Damien survives. Damien watches his father's funeral with a smile while holding the hand of the President of the United States, who is Robert's Godfather. During the last shot of the film, Damien turns around and sinisterly smiles at the camera.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Liev Schreiber | Ambassador Robert Thorn |
| Julia Stiles | Katherine Thorn |
| Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick | Damien Thorn |
| David Thewlis | Keith Jennings |
| Pete Postlethwaite | Father Brennan |
| Mia Farrow | Mrs. Baylock |
[edit] Response
The film currently has received mixed reviews. Andrea Chase from Killer Movie Reviews wrote that the film "lacks the energy of discovery or, you'll pardon the word, revelation. Rather, it feels like a RE-telling just going through the motions and hitting the motifs that we all loved in the original[4]." Joe Utichi from FilmFocus wrote that "Moore's approach fails entirely to capitalise on Damien's creepiness and he might have best been left out entirely; the only adrenaline-pumping moments in the film come from the jump-scares throughout[5]." It received two thumbs up from Ebert & Roeper. The film currently stands at 27% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes (85 out of 121 reviews are counted rotten)[6]. Rolling Stone magazine gave it one out of four stars commenting, "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."
[edit] The Curse of The Omen
- During the filming of The Omen, a strange occurrence happened on set: an entire day's worth of film was lost. "It's strange. We lost a day of film," said Glenn Williamson, a producer of The Omen. "It's not uncommon to maybe lose a reel or maybe a shot. We lost an entire day of film on the scene when [Robert] Thorn goes to cut [Damien’s] hair to see the 666. It was, like, 13,000 feet of film. Everything had a big scratch on it[citation needed]."
- In another strange event, Pete Postlethwaite (Father Brennan) not only lost his brother while he was filming the movie, but before he passed, his brother was in a card game in which he drew three sixes. Postlethwaite is reluctant to put together a connection, but adds "I think things like that do happen and it's just sometimes we're not sensitised enough to see the problem[7]."
- What makes these occurrences even stranger, is that similar "curses" plagued the filming of the original 1976 movie, The Omen, although the occurrences that took place then were much worse.
[edit] 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 knocked Katherine over the railings by bumping his scooter into the chair she was standing on at the time.
In the remake, recent events were purported to fulfill Biblical end-time prophesies, such as the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
[edit] Deaths
Before the nanny commits suicide during Damien's birthday party the first dog in which the Thorn family encounter is an evil possessed black Alsatian instead of a Rottweiler. Later in the film Robert Thorn then sees a Rottweiler next to where Damien's sleeping as either a stray animal or Mrs. Baylock's pet. What happened to the Alsatian is a mystery.
Two differences in particular involve the deaths of Jennings (David Thewlis) and Katherine Thorn (Julia Stiles). Katherine's death in the original film and book involves her being thrown out of the window by Mrs. Baylock. In the remake, Mrs. Baylock inserts air into her blood tube which blocks the flow of blood to her heart thereby killing her via an air embolism. This very slow and agonizing death could be considered more realistic than that of the original as it causes less suspicion, although this is disputed[8]. The book also states that when Katherine fell from the balcony, Mrs. Baylock lied and said that Katherine had tried to commit suicide and therefore, Katherine's death in the original film and book looks more like suicide.
Jenning's death is interesting for it does not follow Seltzer's novel nor the original film. In the original book, Jennings is killed by a pane of glass dangling from a crane above his head. When he bent down to pick up the knives, the glass would drop and decapitate him "like a guillotine". For the original film, special effects supervisor John Richardson tried several times to achieve the effect, but each time the glass leveled and landed horizontally. Richardson suggested the glass could fly off the back of a truck instead.
In the remake, he is bending down to pick up the knives and the camera shows that on the top of the roof of the house next to Jennings, there are builders working. A hammer slides down the roof, hits a sign fastened to the wall. This sign loosens and falls backwards. As Jennings is standing up, the sign decapitates him from behind. Although it can be argued that this death is similar to Seltzer's original vision, it is still unlike the book and 1976 film version.
[edit] Themes
- Damien only has four lines throughout the entire film, not counting the two times in the film where he screams.
- After the first nanny hangs herself at Damien's birthday party, you can see a macaroni picture of a woman with a noose around her neck on the side of the wall in Damien's room, and a picture of the black dog that possessed the nanny to kill herself next to the macaroni picture.
- The wallpaper in Damien's room also resembles a neverending line of sixes.
- The color red was used with special purpose in the film to portend impending danger or death (among other examples; red decorations on Damien's fifth birthday party precede the nanny's suicide; a person with a red raincoat appears before Father Brennan's death; the red flowers Katherine was watering before she fell over the railing).
- During the opening titles, all of the letters 'O' appearing in the actor credits morph into sixes as the names fade out to the next ("Mia Farr6w"), and the letters 'T' morph into Greek Crosses ("David †hewlis").
[edit] Trivia
- Pierce Brosnan, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe were all considered for the role of Robert Thorn. Jim Carrey was the leading choice. Once John Moore was hired as the director he immediately nixed the idea as he didn't want any big names in the movie.
- Rachel Weisz was originally offered the role of Katherine, but declined because she was pregnant. Laura Linney, Hope Davis, and Alicia Witt were all also offered the role before Stiles got the part[9].
- The film previously had a subtitle as The Omen: 666 but was dropped to The Omen[citation needed].
- The film was released on June 6, 2006 (6/6/06). An interesting note about this date is that June 6 is a Tuesday. Generally, movies in the US are released on Friday (and sometimes on Wednesday or Thursday for potential blockbuster movies).
- The film's promotional posters, advertisements and trailers have all capitalized on a common interpretation of an inverted cross (or Cross of St. Peter) being a Satanic symbol. The inverted cross is in fact a symbol of Saint Peter as this is how he was crucified.
- Mia Farrow's nephew is named Damien (the son of her sister, actress Stephanie Farrow). Damien was also the middle name of her brother, Michael Farrow (deceased).
- Mia Farrow played the leading role in Rosemary's Baby, which is also a horror film based on a novel of Satanic offspring.
- Harvey Stephens, who played Damien in the original movie, has a cameo in this film as a tabloid reporter.
- Marco Beltrami was a student of Jerry Goldsmith and on the soundtrack you can hear a reprise of Jerry Goldsmiths famous score on the track The Omen 76/06.
- James Nesbitt was originally up for the role of Jennings until the director eventually went for David Thewlis
- Many Škodas, tramlines and Czech signs can be seen in the street scenes giving an obvious clue to the movie's filming locations.
- The line, "When I close my eyes, I see horrible things." was in the previews, but not the actual movie. Also missing from the film yet in the previews was the line, "Bye-Bye." This line was spoken by Damien immediately before Katherine lost her grip, and was probably cut to limit Damien's lines because of how indifferent, mysterious, and emotionless he is when tragic events occur (e.g., the nanny's suicide, the incident at the zoo, etc.). Several other moments seen in previews do not occur in the actual film — such as the robed jackal figure raising Damien in the bathroom, a small extension of the ambassador's death seen from within the limousine, and a shot of the police running up the steps of the church where Robert Thorn has taken Damien.
- When Robert Thorn is shot, the Police Officer does not follow the Rules of Engagement correctly, merely shouting 'Stop!', before opening fire. This is almost certainly not what would have happened, and the officer would not have shot to kill, merely to wound or incapacitate. This scene also appears in the novel and the original, with small differences. A theory on why the policeman shot the ambassador is that the officer is in fact a follower of Satan like Mrs Baylock and knows that Damien is the long-awaited Anti Christ. He therefore killed Robert to protect the child.
- Around the end of the movie when the car chase starts, the nanny smashes the cars windshield with a sledge hammer. Also when the car starts driving off, it hits a lamppost causing a huge dent to the left side of the car. Later there are scenes that show the car damages disappear and completely recovered, as if it never happened.
- The directors of Scary Movie 4 spoke about the remake on their commentary, saying that they were thinking of spoofing it for Scary Movie 5.
[edit] References
- ^ Box Office Mojo: "Omen Opens to Tuesday Record"
- ^ Play.com: Omen review
- ^ Amazon.com product page
- ^ Killer Movie Reviews: The Omen
- ^ FilmFocus: The Omen review
- ^ Rotten Tomatoes' Omen page
- ^ FemaleFirst.co.uk: "Omen Star Looses Brother During Filming"
- ^ Medical and Forensics Lab: "Can an IV Air Bubble Kill Someone?"
- ^ IMDb: Trvia for The Omen
[edit] External links
- Official Movie Site
- Official Teaser Trailer
- The Omen at the Internet Movie Database
- The Omen at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Omen at ComingSoon.net
- Roger Ebert's review
- The Omen Chronicles
- DVD Review at Dread Central
- Can an air bubble in an IV tube kill someone?
| The Omen Series |
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Original Films |
