Another bad remake

Raise your hand if you'd like to see Mia Farrow get run over by a car. Oh, do I have a movie for you. Even if it fails in everything else, "The Omen" still knows how to kill off its characters.\nAnd to be honest, it doesn't fail outright. It's just, you know, bland.\nI've never been impressed with this franchise of films, and not surprisingly, this remake of the widely-acknowledged 1976 horror classic of the same name didn't strike me either. Something was missing from the first version. This take of "The Omen" has everything you'd expect it to have: malevolent children, religious iconography, Mia Farrow's violent death. But it suffers from the same problems the original did. It doesn't make us believe the characters move with purpose, and without that, it's just treading water, moving us from scene to occasionally-gruesome scene. \nApparently, a lot of people don't see it that way, or were amused by the film's 6-6-06 release date; the show I went to sold out and I ended up with my ass in a booster seat in the back of the theatre. But ticket sales do not a good movie make. Shit, Tom Cruise sells tickets. And he sucks.\nBut let's stay focused. Let's talk specifics. Let's talk direction. John Moore's years of making commercials have paid off, and as such, his movie looks good. His actors, specifically Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles, handle the material they're provided. They look competently stunned when one or another of them dies at the hands of the devil, and appear sufficiently crazy (seriously, Mia Farrow vs. the car is hilarious) when necessary. However, what they're provided with is never very good. There isn't enough development in the characters to truly buy what Moore is trying to sell. And try as it might, Farrow's satanic freak-out isn't unintentionally funny enough to enjoy "The Omen" on laughs alone. \nWhat you're left with then are the paced scenes of violence. Character actor Pete Postlethwaite is introduced to the business end of a heavy steel rod, and David Thewlis shows us what a gaping neck wound looks like. And, in case I haven't mentioned it yet, Mia Farrow gets run over by a car. But it's all just traveling tired ground. "The Omen" was a flawed movie when it came out 30 years ago, and they didn't do anything to fix it the second time around. So skip it, or just watch the old one on video. Or pay eight dollars to watch Mia Farrow get hit by a car. It's a toss-up.