And yet, here we are, with the 2006 version of The Omen. I can’t be sure, but I’d bet quite a bit that this was made specifically so that it could be released (as it was) on June 06, 2006 (or 06/06/06). It’s a nice bit of marketing that might honestly be the best part of the entire film.
There’s a reason I avoided watching The Omen for as long as I have. It has nothing to do with being scared of it; after all, I don’t believe in a Satan or an Antichrist. No, the reason is that The Omen appears in “The Fifty Worst Films of All Time,” and I’ve learned to respect the opinions in that book. Of the films I’ve seen from it, apathy is the best of managed. I’ve outright hated a few of them. This didn’t bode well for The Omen. I’m not the sort of person who revels in bad film unless those films are being narrated by Joel/Mike and the bots.
This time, Harry Medved and Randy Lowell have let me and the rest of us down; The Omen does not belong in their book. This is a very solid thriller that is smart enough to merely hint at the supernatural despite its subject matter. That subject matter, as hinted at in the previous paragraph, is the birth of the Antichrist. So while there are obvious religious implications here, the film very much plays things straight. There are certainly aspects of the supernatural in evidence, but for the wholly skeptical (at least within the film), everything that happens can be written off as coincidence.
