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I'm not sure what the Writer's Guild of America policy is, but I think it's a cheat for David Seltzer to re-use his script for 1976's The Omen holus bolus for this week's remake.
I do not exaggerate.
Hours after seeing the remake -- with Liev Schreiber reprising Gregory Peck (doing an impression of him in fact) as an American ambassador who raises the Devil's son -- I caught the original on broadcast TV and noticed that nearly all scenes and dialogue had been reproduced exactly as written 30 years earlier.
And yes, Seltzer is the writer of both movies. Nice job getting paid for the same script twice.
It's not hard to see that this approach will take the steam out of a remake.
How do you maintain suspense when you know not only what's going to happen next, but also what will be said?
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You didn't have that problem with the Richard Donner original because... well, because it was the original, duh!
At other times, the faithfulness is retained to the point of anachronism.
Would you believe the paparazzo in the story (David Thewlis) -- the guy who discovers Satanic "flaws" in his pictures that presage gory deaths -- still uses a darkroom? In 2006?
("Hello, Hello magazine? Yeah, about that Tom Cruise picture, I'm just sloshing it now, it'll sit in the fixer for a while and then dry and then I'll just mail it in.")
In fact, the whole premise is sort of anachronistic now.
In 1976, it was a Da Vinci Code-like revelation (ahem) that Satan's area code was 666.
These days, it's old news. And yet, characters in this Omen still cock their heads like confused mutts at the number of the Beast.
C'mon people, has the career of Iron Maiden been for naught?
The plot, then and now, sees a young American embassy official arrive at a Rome hospital to discover that his wife (Julia Stiles) has given birth and the baby is dead.
He's offered another newborn, an orphan whose mother died in childbirth, to pass off to his wife as their own.
Soon Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) has grown into the kind of boy zoo animals want to kill, and around whom folks die -- including a nanny, who creates a job vacancy at his birthday.
Whew, luckily the mysterious Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow) shows up to care for Damien while his mother suffers grotesque nightmares (it gets big laughs when Mia says, "Caring for children has been the joy of my life"). Meanwhile dad, the photog and a mad priest (Pete Postlethwaite) chase a mystery.
Mia is one scary nanny, the only actor in this Omen scarier than the original.
As for little Davey-Fitzpatrick, I really can't judge him vis the original's Harvey Stephens (who has a cameo here as a tabloid reporter), since all child actors scare me.
In fact, for all I know Dakota Fanning might be the AntiChrist.
BOTTOM LINE: Except for Gus Van Sant's scene-for-scene Psycho, there may never have been a remake so thuddingly faithful to the original, down to the dialogue and anachronisms (a paparazzo using a darkroom these days?). It kind of takes the suspense out of a horror film when you know not only exactly what's happening next, but also what will be said.
(This film is rated 14A)