The Omen

This is almost a note-for-note remake of the 1976 original, down to the stare Damien makes straight into the camera at film’s end. Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles replace Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as parents who wind up raising the Antichrist when their baby is switched at birth. Damien, played by Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (an awfully cheery name for a child playing the spawn of Satan), behaves badly, injuring his mother and making sandwiches in the middle of the night without parental guidance. The movie looks good and manages a few decent jolts. Mia Farrow, as the evil nanny, is a total gas. When she kicks Schreiber’s ass near the film’s end, it’s the single best moment in the movie. Stiles is all wrong in the role of Katherine Thorn, but Schreiber fills Peck’s shoes nicely. It also stars David Thewlis in the photographer role played by David Warner in the original.