The Omen (2006)

The Omen is a remake of the original movie from 1976, and I have to say that it was pretty much inevitable. How could any studio see the date 6/6/06 looming on the calendar and not want to remake this movie?
Unfortunately, they really should have resisted. The movie isn't bad, but it is one of the least essential remakes of a movie I have ever seen. It follows the original movie largely scene by scene without a lot of reinterpretation to make it worthwhile. The movie is reasonably competently acted by Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber and has some fine performances from supporting actors. But it only achieves the level of intensity of the original in two or three scenes in the whole picture. The scene where Damien flips out while being taken to the church is one that is noticeably weaker in the remade version.
Plot-wise, the story is about an American diplomat (Schreiber) who agrees to a baby switch at the hospital because he has been told that, due to complications, his own son didn't survive the birth and this other baby has lost his mother. As the lad grows and the diplomat rises in rank due to a bizarre accident, weird things start to happen. The nanny hangs herself in front of a gaggle of people at a birthday party, a priest shows up saying that the kid really has a jackal for a mother, and a photographer starts noticing odd things in the pictures he takes around the diplomat. The diplomat's wife (Stiles) starts to feel that her son is actually evil, and the diplomat comes to some disturbing revelations.
I can't help but feel that the movie-watching public would have been far better served if the movie had been substantially re-envisioned by taking a completely different point of view or if the whole project had been scrapped in favor of a rerelease of the original Omen trilogy into theaters for a special anti-christ movie fest on 6/6/06.
Grade: C+
Grade for the original: B+