The Omen 666 -- 2006 -- R

This is a remake of the film of the same name (minus the 666) from 1976. The plot is 99% identical to the original with a few location and effect changes and a slight updating here and there of stuff that happened between 76 and now.

We start with a lot of prophetic hullabaloo basing a variety of news clips from the past few years (9/11, the Tsunami from a couple years ago, the shuttle explosion) on passages from Revelation indicating the time of the Antichrist has come. Then our her's child is born, dies, and he adopts a child whose mother died in childbirth. He willingly accepts the baby as his own to comfort his wife. Then comes the question: is the child the Antichrist? The 76 version makes this a lot less clear than this one. Everything seemed like more of an accident back then where this one was more deliberate.

Our first storyline problem came pretty quick, and that would be the infamous hangnig of the nanny. We got no bonding time with this woman. We didn't see her interact with Damien in any way, nor did we know anything about her until after it was all over. I saw this as an error in character since while her fate is predetermined, we needed at least a little connection instead of, "hm, who's that?" Crack! "Ok, who WAS that?"

The movie progressed, as I said, like the original, so there's not a lot that went wrong. Unlike some remakes that screw up the story somehow, this one simply updated it, and played it just like it did last time, so it actually worked remarkably well. One interesting change was the beheading, but I have no issue with this. It worked just as well as the original version did.

The characters were decently developed for the genre. We didn't have an intimate knowledge of them, but I cared enough about what was going on an about Robert Thorn. Horror movies are meant to hit us in our vulnerable spots, and this one used a child, which is probably the most vulnerable since people don't usually fear their own children, so that was a good little idea as well.

Of course, my one lingering question is "Why the heck didn't they fire the new nanny?" She was breaking rules, arguing with the family, and even brought in a dog that she was instructed to get rid of and never did. Oh well.

People have whined and complained about this movie, but really, it wasn't too bad. I acheived what it was meant to achieve: bring the 1976 story to the present day and tell it again for a modern audience. Whether us movie fanatics wants to admi it or not, there are people who do not watch movies that were made before they were born. Therefore, they would never watch the 1976 Omen, and this gives them access to a horror classic that was remade rather well, in my opinion.