First, I really like Julia Stiles. Granted, I haven't seen much of her filmography, but I was still pleasantly surprised when she showed up in season 5 of Dexter.
Second, I had myself convinced that I had seen this film before, and felt good about it.
Well, we know how I feel about shot for shot remakes, so I was pretty let down when I realized what was going on, and that no, I hadn't seen it before. And once again, a star studded cast cannot make up for a poorly executed storyline.
Corey says:
The buildup to this movie was amazing. It’s one of the few advertising campaigns that I remember having an effect on me. I had seen the original Omen years before and it hovered vaguely in my mind as I saw the poster and commercial blitz touting “06/06/06”. Living in the ultra-conservative area I did, the inundation of Satanic fun in the sun created a paranoia that I’m not entirely certain that the rest of the nation (or the world, for that matter) experienced.
To give you folks an idea of how conservative our area is, let me tick off a few quick points. My fair city (we try to call it that, but we aren't really fooling anyone) is home to one of the larger and more famous U.S. Catholic Universities. Furthermore, we have one of the highest concentration of Polish Catholics in the country. Besides the Catholic contingent (who can generally be pretty mild, what with all that guilt), we also have a sizable Evangelical population. LeSEA Broadcasting (one of the most influential and wide reaching Evangelical broadcast networks) calls our town home. In fact, they have not one, two, or three, but four (four!) 24 hour Christian-based programming networks.
Back in ’06, I was working for a restaurant. Most of the folks that worked with me knew that I was a horror nut, and I wasn't afraid to talk at length about films even if no one was listening. Once the ad campaign started, coworkers would come up to me apprehensively, asking about the film.
“Well,” I would say, “I wasn't a huge fan of the original, but it had some good stuff in it,” and proceed to talk about some of the stuff (It’s all for you yadda yadda yadda) I liked, and some of the stuff that was boring.
“Well yeah, but… it’s coming out on 6/6/6.”
“Yup! Super cool for a movie about the antichrist, eh?”
“Uhh…”
And the conversation would usually fade off into other things. I was younger then, and didn’t realize that the folks I worked with were so arbitrarily terrified by a number that the fact that the movie is about the fucking ANTICHRIST was a secondary consideration to the number.
Christians.
This movie kind of sucked, but in the same way that the original did. Mainly because it’s a blatant ripoff of the first, and didn’t really add much to the mythos. Watch the first one twice, and you get much of the same idea.
Remakes.
Salty says:
A conversation between two studio executives.
A: Hey, June 06, 2006 is coming up and since we already have the rights to The Omen, I propose a remake.
B: What do you have in mind?
A: What do you mean?
B: For the pitch? What’s going to fill the seats?
A: Oh, Um… okay. Well, the date thing is really all I had. I figure we can just use the original script, I mean we’ll update it a little here and there, but I don’t really want to have to pay anyone. And we want it to appeal to the kids, so we’ll give it a really slick look. My Dalmation went on the rag last week - it was a pretty startling visual. We should mimic that and do a lot black and white with red splashes everywhere.
B: Aw that is so cool! Hold on I have to go to the bathroom. Hey! Inspiration! How about a scene in a big empty white bathroom? That’d be pretty scary.
A: What do you mean like all the fixtures are white and stuff?
B: No. No fixtures. Just an unnecessarily large white bathroom… Bathrooms are scary. You know over 70% of serious household accidents take place in the bathroom. Plus, it’s a strong visual.
A: Okay, okay. You know what else would be freaky: snow that floated up!
B: Snow does float up unless you’re doing it upside-down.
A: No, I mean like the precipitation snow.
B: … Aw man! That is freaky!
A: Hold on! Let’s get this down on paper… okay what else?
B: Well, we should probably amp up the violence so it will really hold the attention of younger audiences, but I really don’t want to end up producing one of those torture-porn movies.
A: Oh, no problem. We’ll use CG effects for every death. You can do gruesome stuff, but it really won’t look good and it’s super cheap. No one really cares about those parts anyway.
B: Are you sure?
A: Totally.
B: So what have we got so far?
A: Well, we have a menstruating dog in a big white bathroom with a lot of CG coming out on 6/6/06.
B: I’d pay to watch that! We’re really good at our jobs!
A: I know.
B: But what about the talent? We need to get some big names.
A: Well, we’ll just pay like Mia Farrow or someone to come in and do something.
B: Oh! I just had another vision: cow skull in a red silk robe.
A: What does it do?
B: …I don’t know… it’s just a cool thing, you know?
A: Yeah, okay... Hey, do you remember that burned priest from the original? We should make him like all “aw gross!” and stuff, you know.
B: Aw man, that would be totally gross! Let’s work out the details over a round of golf.
A: Now, you’re talking! Hey, this is going to be great!
B: Yeah, I love golfing!
The resulting movie is terrible.
| Maire | Corey | Salty |
|---|---|---|
| ☆ | ☆☆ | ☆ |
No comments:
Post a Comment