Alan @ Transbuddha's Movie Review of The Omen (2006)

That Laughter You Hear is a Bad Omen
Alan @ Transbuddha - wrote on 12/23/08

I believe that any movie that kills off Julia Stiles can’t be all bad but this one certainly tries its darnedest to prove me wrong.

I must first start off with describing the opening scene of the film where the Pope (Bohumil Svarc) is shown omens coming to pass that lead the church to believe the Anti-Christ is about to be born. The PowerPoint presentation (your groan here) involves images of comets and other signs including real images of the attack on the World Trade Center and the effects of Hurricane Katrina (your disgust here). To call this bad taste doesn’t do the words justice.

The movie is filled with the aburd including Mia Farrow who plays the nanny from hell Mrs. Blaylock. I can only assume she’s meant to be tempting and menacing but like all the other characters in the film she is neither. In fact no character in this flick is anything but unintentionally funny and impossible to take seriously.

I’ll give you an example of how the film comes up short. At one point the characters come to a river covered in fog and make the way across on a small boat with a single robed figure which is obviously a homage to Caron but its done so cheaply and half-heartedly it sinks, like so much in the film, like a lead stone. The scene isn’t necessary and in fact makes you think of much better films you would rather be watching like Clash of the Titans. It’s rather sad.

The film’s premise is so off the wall that only in the hands of a very good director it still would have been a hard sell, and director John Moore just isn’t up to the task. And so the plot of an evil child that must be killed (in sacrificial manner) before he destroys the world comes off lewd and silly rather than suspenseful or terrifying.

How bad is The Omen? Well if it weren’t for the many unintentional jokes and the death scene of Julia Stiles (which itself is drawn out to such an extent to squeeze out all the joy) it would be unwatchable. However despite its limitations it remains a pretty funny example of how far cinema can go off track and crash in spectacular fashion.