 Movies rarely open on a Tuesday night, unless the movie is a horror flick and the Tuesday happens to fall on 6/6/06 -- a date with evil implications key to the movie's storyline. Such is the case with today's release of Fox's remake of its 1976 hit The Omen, with Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles stepping into the roles originally played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. David Seltzer, who wrote the original film, wrote the remake, one reason, perhaps that Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times praise it for being "faithful" to the original. Ebert applauds director John Moore for pulling it all off "with mood and style" and Chocano notes that he "has ratcheted up the boo factor, more or less absent from the original." On the other hand, Gene Seymour of Newsday remarks that the new film "isn't a remake so much as a half-smudged, half-faded duplicate of the 1976 original." There's a lot of light side/dark side reviewing accompanying the film's opening. Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer calls it "creepily efficient," while Chris Kaltenback in the Baltimore Sun remarks that "there's not much to the film that a repeat viewing of its earlier incarnation couldn't provide." Kyle Smith in the New York Post pronounces the new Omen "a karaoke version" of the original, but remarks that Moore "has added some creepy visuals and assembled an unusually strong cast for a horror flick." But Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News remarks,"All remake and no new ideas make Damien a dull boy." |
