Remake – the very word is able to send chills down the spinal cords of many a horror movie fan but it seems to be the word of the hour as Hollywood apparently can't get enough of them. Some have been good (The Hills Have Eyes and Dawn Of The Dead), others not so good (The Fog) but most of them are simply rather unremarkable and it is in this category that the 2006 remake of The Omen can be safely squirreled away.

A diplomat named Robert Thorn (Liev Schrieber) and his wife Kathy (Julia Stiles) are expecting but when she delivers, their baby is still born – the only ones who know this are Robert and the doctor. To help relieve the couple's pain, the doctor offers to switch their baby with a living one who's mother died in childbirth and Thorn accepts knowing that his wife will never know the difference. A few years later and Robert's been promoted to Deputy Ambassador and the family is living in England and doing just fine. Robert finds himself in line for an impromptu promotion when a strange explosion in his boss' car kills the man and lands Robert his seat.

Fast forward a few years and the Thorn's son, Damian (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) is celebrating his sixth birthday with a party. Things don't quite go as planned and soon enough a lot of people affiliated with Damian start winding up dead. His caregiver, Mrs. Blaylock (Mia Farrow), starts acting stranger and stranger and a priest named Father Brennen (Pete Postlethwaite) begins to suspect something is up with the boy. One thing leads to another until the Thorns' life is turned upside down and they start to wonder if their little boy isn't really the Anti-Christ…

This modernized version of Richard Donner's 1976 classic follows that earlier film almost to a tee. There's very little in this film that differs from what came before it and as such, if you've seen the first movie (and a lot of you have) then you'll know where it's all going and how it's all going to turn out. This results in a picture that's actually rather dull despite some stylish direction and a few accomplished set pieces (many of which are just too familiar).

Despite the fact that the film is completely predictable it isn't a complete waste of time thanks to some clever casting. Schrieber can't come close to the screen presence that Gregory Peck had in his part before him but he does do a good job with the material and he's believable in the part. Julia Stiles does quite well, and although she looks a little young for the role she's pretty good in those scenes where she's required to really act and portray some heavy emotion. Davey-Fitzpatrick doesn't look quite as creepy as his predecessor Harvey Stephens (look for him in a brief cameo as a reporter) but he's close enough that most people won't notice – he is an eerie looking kid, or at least he's made up to be one here – and it works. Cameos from Mia Farrow and the whipping boy of Italian Cinema, Giovanni Lambardo Radice as Father Spiletto, are fun to see and both are actually fairly memorable in their roles here.

In the end, however, a nice looking film with good performances that tells the same story as an older nice looking film with even better performances (and a much more memorable score!) is still unoriginal. This is one of those cases where the remake sticks too close to the source material and it just isn't as good as the one that came before it. It'd be tough to top a Richard Donner movie with Gregory Peck in the lead so it's curious why the filmmaker's even tried rather than to branch out in a different direction from the original film. There are plenty of ways that they could have changed things up a bit to at least make the movie more than a carbon copy of a classic – sadly that didn't happen, and we're left with unimpressive mediocrity.

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is good but it doesn't look as sharp as one would expect a movie that is only a few months old to look as the fine detail in the background of the picture just isn't as distinct as other recent films to hit DVD lately. Other than that, things look okay here. Some mild line shimmering is present but don't worry about mpeg compression artifacts or print damage as aside from a little bit of grain here and there the picture is perfectly clean. Oddly enough, however, there is some strange pixelization in some of the scenes that you can't help but notice – this does take things down a notch or two. Edge enhancement is kept to a minimum and color reproduction looks good (some scenes are intentionally flat looking to give the movie a more macabre atmosphere). Black levels look nice a strong and they don't break up at all and skin tones look lifelike and natural throughout. Not a horrible transfer but it definitely could have been better.