Synopsis

Robert Thorn is unaware of the dark prophecies alluding to an Anti-Christ. A senior American diplomat, he has other things on his mind. His wife Katherine, has endured a difficult delivery and she’s as yet unaware their newborn child has died. Devastated by the loss, Thorn’s concern turns to Katherine, who had suffered two previous miscarriages. That night, the hospital priest Father Spiletto, presents Thorn with another child whose mother has died in childbirth. The priest compels Thorn to take the infant boy as his own; Katherine will never know the truth, and their son, which they name Damien, will be raised as their flesh and blood. Katherine embraces the child as her own, blossoming in motherhood; Thorn, it would seem, has made the right choice. His career takes off and he is appointed the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. But certain events involving the now five-year-old Damien, are deeply disturbing. A suicide, a strange priest brings dire warnings and then Mrs Baylock turns up. Could it all be coincidence?

What The Critics Say

"I don’t approve of remakes, but The Omen redux is riveting, imaginative and ultimately bone-chillingly satisfying." Rex Reed NEW YORK OBSERVER "As a horror film, "The Omen" works very well. Sacrilege, blasphemy, cinematic treason, here goes: this version of "The Omen" is better than the original." Joel Meares URBAN CINEFILE "...scarier and more unsettling the second time around." Laura Clifford REELING REVIEWS "This new Omen works fine. It has its own look and it plays the story straight, as if this were the first time it was being brought to the screen. If you haven't seen the original movie, this one should provide some good, shivery fun." Kurt Loder MTV "You know all the bad things that have been happening in the world, from September 11 to the tsunami to various African massacres? Well, it's the Devil what done it - Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness. I thought mankind was responsible for a lot of it, but I was misinformed. We needed a remake of The Omen to show us the way, apparently." Paul Byrnes SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

"Director John Moore (Flight of the Phoenix) has a great visual style: pale hues are offset by splashes of red in almost every scene. Horror fans will enjoy a few effective jump-out-of-your-seat moments, including two creatively gruesome deaths. Flaws aside, this is a devil of a good time. 3 STARS" Mark Beirne OUR BRISBANE "The Omen remake is creepily efficient." Carrie Rickey PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER "Stylish and suspenseful, The Omen is a classy remake." Staci Layne Wilson, HORROR.COM "I am not entirely convinced that "The Omen" (1976) needed to be remade, but having seen director John Moore's take on the anti-Christ infancy, I am glad that it was. Not nearly as bloated, dull and self-important as the original (a minority opinion, I concede), there is an exuberance in this version that, more than most horror films, had me smiling throughout." Joel Meares URBAN CINEFILE "It's still an involving story. And the film's well-acted, particularly by Ms. Farrow and Mr. Postlethwaite. Plus, there are two really good scares that'll make you jump out of your seat. That alone was entertaining." Mario Tarradell DALLAS MORNING NEWS

The Inside Story Whenever a remake comes out the first words most people query is, "has Hollywood run out of ideas again?" The answer to that question is no! Hollywood has plenty of good ideas coming through. Enough to make a truckload of films, So why another remake? Because some older films are like ripe fruit, they are there for the picking. Take this latest version of "The Omen". It came out in the mid seventies. So let's assume for arguements sake that if you were born in 1957 you most probably saw it on release. Fast forward to 2006, thirty years in fact after the original was released. To see this latest version today, you would've had to be born in 1991. I'm applying that date because the film is rated MA15+ which means cinemagoers have to be fifteen years of age and over (with ID) or if under fifteen years of age, in the company of a parent or adult guardian. Now I suspect most responsible parents wouldn't take a child younger than fifteen to see this style of film, so using that medium age gives film makers a lot of scope when it comes to working with a new generation of paying customers. Proportionaly, some remakes, or as some production companies call them, re-tellings, work well. Others, well they don't fare so well. Producing a good remake is generally seen as just as hard as making a good sequel. Fortunately "The Omen" has enough distance between itself and its predecessor to do reasonably well. There is one big factor that works when a remake comes out. Curiosity! That 'eager desire to know' (if you are old enough), how it compares with the original. In the case of "The Omen" that will be a big factor for attracting the mature cinemagoers. They will be eager to satisfy their curiosity. As for younger fans, well they're like all generations of film lovers who are attracted to this genre of movie. They too like going to a film, not only to be entertained, but also to have the crap scared out of them. "The original film had a strong foundation," says director John Moore states. "But there were several opportunities to give the characters a more contemporary feel." Does that also apply to the main characters Robert and Katherine who are much younger this time around? "We felt that by making Robert and Katherine younger, they’d project the image of a couple on the ascendancy of their lives, both personally and professionally," producer Glenn Williamson said. "While they're educated and successful, they’re also young and working hard to make their career and marriage work. It adds to their confusion and shock when they begin to suspect, and then discover the truth about Damien." And Robert is placed in a situation, many of us would find quite difficult to negotiate? "The film asks the questions: What would you do if you truly loved somebody? What would you do to make them happy? And what Thorn does," Moore explained, "to protect his wife from the devastation of a child lost at birth, is seemingly benign. People adopt children; it happens all the time. But from this 'innocent' lie and his attempts to do some good, that evil is able to come into his life and into the world." That evil is "The Anti-Christ". An evil bastard who somewhere on his body carries the 'mark of the beast', 666. "It’s a tragedy on an intimate scale, in how it affects his family," Moore continues. "On a global level, Robert has opened a doorway to evil because he has, without realizing it, shaken hands with the devil." Playing the characters Robert and Katherine Thorn are Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles. How did they get the lead roles? By a simple process Moore uses on every film he works on. And which process is that? "I cast "The Omen" the way I always cast a picture, which is to put all the characters names on a big board and then put up actors' head-shots," says the director of "Flight of the Phoenix". "I stuck Julia Stiles’s picture up on the board, and for weeks there was only one picture there. In fact, hers was the only photo on the board for the role of Katherine Thorn." Stiles, who just about stole "Mona Lisa Smile" from under Julia Roberts nose, says she was more than surprised by Moores offer of the role of Katherine. "Actually, I was terrified," Stiles recalls. "The idea of "The Omen" really frightened me. But I knew there was something in John’s vision for the film and character that I could really sink my teeth into." That vision was to play a multilayered character rather than the one portrayed in the seventies film. "Social, personal and political perspectives on motherhood have changed a lot in the past thirty years. In our story, Katherine struggles with the fact that she’s a young woman, a stay at home mother, living in a foreign country where she doesn’t have many friends," Moore notes. "Her personal conflict is agitated as Damien’s true nature is revealed." "Katherine begins to feel a kind of detachment from Damien, which she and Robert cannot understand," says Stiles. "Over time, she realizes there’s some validity to her fear of her son. Adding to her escalating troubles is the feeling that nobody’s listening to her. She turns her anxiety inwards. It eats away at her until she eventually breaks down." Moore also had actor Liev Schreiber on the top of his list. Schreiber, who recently made his directing debut on the film "Everything is Illuminated", provides an answer to that question of why there are remakes of such 'classic' films as "The Omen". "There’s a certain kind of story that stands retelling," says Schreiber. "The Omen has an element that’s in all of Shakespeare’s plays: It finds a way of reinventing itself every twenty or thirty years, because it’s culturally tapped into something to which many people can relate." On the theme of the film, Schreiber has a different view to his director. Moore sees the film "as an exploration of evil", while Schreiber sees it "as a story of faith. I was intrigued by The Omen's elements of trust and faith. Those are the two things by which Thorn is challenged." Up for the challenge of a role in "The Omen" was veteran actress and the first American actress to be accepted as a member of London's prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, Mia Farrow. While the idea of playing a truly evil character on the big screen for the first time appealed to her, she wondered why Moore would choose her. "I thought, why would they want to cast me. In the first 'Omen', Mrs Baylock (played by Billie Whitelaw) was from the beginning, very, very scary. I loved being scared by her. I wondered how I could recapture that kind of instant menace. But John Moore said he wanted to take a different approach to the character. I’m going to keep the mystery, John told me. Mrs Baylock has a secret and I’m not going to show her hand until later on in the story." And here's a twist to the story about casting the roles for "The Omen" which coincidently involves both Stiles and Farrow who appeared together in Pulitzer Prize and multiple TONY Award Winner James Lapine's 2005 New York stage play "Fran's Bed". "It was funny," Farrow says, "I was rehearsing a play with Julia Stiles in which I play her devoted mother. Julia and I completed our runs in the play on a Sunday night, and a week later, I'm, as Mrs Baylock, making things very difficult for her on the set of The Omen." Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick makes his debut as the evil child Damian. Moore chose him because he had 'the look'. Those who saw the film teaser in cinemas will know what Moore means. "Seamus knew when to be intense," says Moore. "The wonderful thing to watch was how much he’d get into it, and how he wanted to help keep the mood. He was a joy and a delight." The Verdict "No doubt comparisons will be made with the 1976 film which starred Gregory Peck, Lee Remick and young Harvey Stephens. While this latest version of "The Omen" is a virtual retelling of the original, it still manages to hold its own. Mia Farrow was a brilliant choice for Damians nanny Mrs Baylock producing a performance that will not go unnoticed. The mood of "The Omen" is, naturally, one of suspense, dread and anticpation, yet for all that it still manages to come up with a few 'scare the pants off you' moments including an ingeniously devised death for one of the characters which will have many cinemagoers cringing in their seat. While no where in the league of that classic "The Exorcist", or for that matter "Rosemary's Baby", this modern telling of the evil tale should have enough appeal to win over twenty first century cinemagoers." Cast & Crew Bytes "THE OMEN" stars .......
2005 Tony Award Liev Schreiber ["The Sum of All Fears", "Scream 1, 2 & 3" and "The Manchurian Candidate"]; 2000 National Board of Review Award winner Julia Stiles ["State & Main", "Save the Last Dance", ""The Business Of Strangers and "Ten Things I Hate About You"]; four BAFTA-TV Best Actor Award and SAG Award winner Michael Gambon ["Sleepy Hollow", "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"]; National Board Of Review Best Actor Award winner Pete Postlethwaite ["The Usual Suspects", "The Shipping News", "In the Name of the Father" and "The Constant Gardner"]; David Thewlis ["Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", "Kingdom Of Heaven" and "Basic Instinct 2"], Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick ["The Omen"] and NBR Best Actress Award winner Mia Farrow ["Rosemary’s Baby", "Hannah and Her Sisters", "The Great Gatsby" and "Death on the Nile"] as Mrs Baylock.
"THE OMEN" was .......
directed by John Moore ["Behind Enemy Lines"]; screenplay by David Seltzer ["The Omen", "Bird on a Wire", "Punchline" and "The Omen"]; production design by Patrick Lumb ["Behind Enemy Lines" and "Flight Of The Phoenix"]; director of photography Jonathan Sela ["Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing and Charm School" and "Randy and the Mob"]; original music by Marco Beltrami ["Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines", "I, Robot" and "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"] produced by Glenn Williamson ["Far from Heaven", "Sylvia", "Road to Perdition" and "Catch Me If You Can"] and John Moore ["He Shoots, He Scores"]. Run Time 105 minutes Rated MA15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2006 - 20TH Century Fox - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2006 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved