All hype and no horror.
During the late show at Lansing's Celebration Cinema, 200 E. Edgewood Blvd., on 6-6-06 — ah, scary — audience members openly laughed at the spooky and serious bits during "The Omen."
Hollywood's interest in remakes boggles the mind. Well, maybe it's not that puzzling because remakes almost guarantee fans of the original will be standing in line for a ticket.
And what's more important than making money? A guaranteed lock to make money.
A big problem with the remake, or let's say repeat, was director John Moore stayed too close to the original. How can you scare someone if they already know what's going to happen?
It's like your little brother standing in front of you for five minutes and then shouting "boo," rather than sneaking up on you, leaping out from behind a lounge chair and screaming, "Boogie man's here to eat your brain!"
Also, due to Moore's trueness to the original, he used lengthy shots to get that '70s feel. Yes, this sounds like a good idea on the surface, but the problem was Moore didn't have the acting talent to handle these elongated camera shots.
Julia Stiles folded, cracked, stunk, didn't break a leg, whatever you want a call it — she didn't do a good job. She should just go back to those romantic-comedy, booty-shaking films that people seem to like her in.
Her acting isn't believable, and the totally unconvincing characters make it hard for viewers to feel bad when the characters are tragically injured.
Actually, it became more exciting to root against the safety of Stiles, who played Katherine Thorn — a well-to-do, lazy mother — and start cheering for her devil-child Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) to take her out.
Damien and his nanny Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow) do eventually team up — whatever, I can give away some plot details; it's a remake — but it isn't very long before Damien slams into her with his scooter, sending her off an indoor balcony, down a couple stories to the hard floor.
At this point, Stiles has already become fake-upset like 20 times before Damien and Mrs. Baylock get their act together and start terrorizing her.
If Moore were smart, he would have focused more on Damien and Mrs. Baylock because they're pure evil, and both look really creepy. But instead, Stiles has more screen time than Tom Hanks in "Cast Away." Not really, but it feels that way because her emotions are so flat and difficult to take seriously.
To all the horror/suspense fans out there, just forget about this ridiculous attempt at a remake. Just hold tight until "Snakes On A Plane" hits theaters in mid-August.
It's hard to imagine "Snakes" not being creepy, sweet and suspenseful with good old, smooth-talking Samuel L. Jackson on a plane with some vicious, slimy, violent snakes. Plus, "Snakes" is an original idea, not some copy of a classic.
