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The Omen (2006)

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The Omen (also known as The Omen: 666) is a 2006 remake of Richard Donner's The Omen of 1976 and a part of The Omen series. Directed by John Moore and written by David Seltzer, the film stars Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick. It was released worldwide on June 6, 2006.

Plot[]

At 6 AM on 6 June, the Vatican Observatory notices a comet in the sky. At a meeting between the leaders of the Church, a cardinal, Fabretti (Carlos Sabatini), interprets the comet and other events and disasters that have occurred as signs of the eve of Armageddon.

Meanwhile, Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber), an American diplomat stationed in Italy, rushes to a hospital in Rome where his wife Katherine has gone into labor. Once he arrives, he is told that the baby died soon after birth. To spare Kate (Julia Stiles) then anguish of the child's death, Robert accepts the suggestion of the hospital's Catholic priest, Father Spiletto (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) to secretly adopt another newborn whose mother died in childbirth. Robert and Kate raise the boy as their own and name him Damien.

Robert's career ascends over the course of the next five years. He is named Deputy Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and after the ambassador dies in a bizarre accident, Robert becomes Ambassador and settles into a large estate in London. However, disturbing events start to revolve around Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), the most prominent being his nanny hanging herself at his birthday party, driven to do so by a large black dog.

Soon afterward, Robert is approached by Father Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite), who delivers an eerie warning and knows the truth about Damien's birth and more, at which point Robert has him escorted out. Meanwhile, photographer Keith Jennings (David Thewlis) finds out that several of his photographs contain mysterious signs, later revealed to foreshadow a series of shocking deaths.

A new nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow), is hired and tells Damien that she has been sent to protect him. Tension between Mrs. Baylock and the Thorns rises when the nanny starts to make decisions against their wishes, including bringing a large watchdog without their permission. On the way to the previous nanny's funeral, Damien becomes terrified as they approach the church, attacking Kate in a fit of fear.

That night, Kate experiences a premonition/nightmare about Damien. The following day a field trip to the city zoo ends with various species of primates becoming aggressive at the sight of Damien. Kate suspects that there is something not right about her son. Robert however brushes off her concerns. That night, Kate again experiences a nightmare about Damien and awakes in panic. She goes downstairs and discovers Damien making a sandwich in the middle of the night. She calls to him but he simply walks past her with an ominous stare.

Robert again meets with Father Brennan, who tells him that Damien must die and a man called Bugenhagen, located in Tel Megiddo, can show him how. Enraged, Robert sends him away again. Father Brennan, sensing something evil, with a torrential storm around, attempts to seek shelter in a church, but the door is mysteriously bolted shut. A lightning bolt strikes the church steeple, causing him to be impaled by a large steel rod which falls from the roof of the church.

Upon discovering she is pregnant, Katherine wants to have an abortion, as she is afraid to have another child like Damien. Robert however is against it. Shortly afterward, Kate is knocked off the landing by Damien riding his scooter, and tumbles over the balcony. He refuses her pleas for help and she falls to the first floor, severely injuring herself and also resulting in the loss of the unborn baby. After the hospitalized Kate begs Robert not to "let him kill [her]", Robert finally accepts that something is amiss with Damien.

Fueled by the warnings given to him by Father Brennan and further information from Keith Jennings, Robert and Jennings go in search of Damien's biological mother. After meeting a nun in Rome, they discover that the hospital where Damien was born burned down. They then go to a monastery in Subiaco and meet Father Spiletto, now wheelchair-ridden and badly disfigured, who tells them where Damien's mother is buried.

They find the grave of Maria Avedici Santoya, Damien's real mother, in the old cemetery of Cerveteri, and find the skeleton of a jackal inside; revealing that Damien cannot be human. In the neighboring tomb, Robert discovers the corpse of a human infant with a cracked skull; revealing that his biological son wasn't stillborn, and was murdered at birth. He and Jennings are then attacked by a pack of black dogs, and barely escape over the fence. Meanwhile, Mrs. Baylock visits Kate in the hospital under the pretense of delivering flowers and then induces an air embolism by introducing air from an empty syringe into Kate's IV, mercilessly murdering her.

After learning of Kate's death, Robert decides to follow Brennan's advice and kill Damien. He goes to Megiddo and meets Bugenhagen (Michael Gambon), who tells them that Damien is the long-prophesized Antichrist, and that the only way to destroy him is to take him to holy ground and kill him with the seven sacrificial daggers of Megiddo. To prove his claims, Bugenhagen tells Robert to search Damien for a birthmark in the shape of three sixes. Robert at first denies that the son he has raised is the Son of Satan, throws the daggers away and leaves. However, Jennings is determined to go through with the plan, and goes to pick up the daggers. While Jennings is collecting the daggers, he is decapitated by a falling sign, causing Robert to change his mind.

After a long pensive flight back to London, Robert arrives home during a torrential storm. The watchdog attacks, but Robert manages to trap it. Robert then goes upstairs to Damien's room and quietly cuts a large lock of Damien's hair off to reveal a 666 birthmark on his scalp, confirming that Damien is indeed the Antichrist. Mrs. Baylock attacks suddenly, but Robert is able to fight her off. He takes Damien outside to his car. Mrs. Baylock pursues them and Robert kills her by running her over. Robert drives the Lexus frantically, crashing through his iron gate with law enforcement officers pursuing. He drives to a church to kill Damien on consecrated ground, but as he is about to stab Damien with the first dagger, he is killed by an officer of the Diplomatic Protection Group.

Robert's funeral - shown in parallel to the death of the Pope - is attended by the President of the United States. At first, it cannot be told whether or not Robert was able to stab Damien before he was shot; but it is then shown that the President is with Damien, both with backs to the camera. The last shot shows Damien slowly turning around, giving the camera a sinister smile.

Differences from the Original[]

  • In the remake, there is a scene before the one in which Robert arrives at the hospital, in which a priest astronomer notices a comet taking the shape of a glowing star. The Church have a meeting over this and a bishop interprets it as a sign of the birth of the Antichrist.
  • In the remake, Robert was 34, but in the original he appeared to be in his 50s.
  • In the original, Robert was appointed US Ambassador to Great Britain and then moved to London with Kathy and Damien. But in the remake, Robert's friend Steven Haines was appointed Ambassador and Robert was Deputy. However, while Steven was travelling to Italy from London, his limozine was involved in an accident that blew it up; resulting in Robert being appointed Ambassador three months later.
  • In the 1976 film, Damien went missing (leading Kathy to believe he had drowned in the nearby river until it turned out moments later that he was just playing a game) while Robert and Kathy were walking in a park with him. But in the 2006 film, it was while Kate was watching him while he was playing on a swing in a park playground.
  • In the original, the Hellhound which made Holly hang herself was a Rottweiler (much like the one Mrs. Baylock brought in as Damien's watchdog), while in the remake, it was a black German Shepherd.
  • In the 1976 film, Holly looked the Hellhound in the eye, but in the 2006 film, the nanny saw it from a distance.
  • In the remake, it is Robert who tries to shield Damien from seeing the nanny hang herself instead of Kathy like it was in the original.
  • In the original film, Robert and Brennan first discussed Damien's origins in Robert's office, while in the remake, it was in the lobby of the Embassy.
  • In the 1976 film, Brennan, while trying to warn Robert that Damien was born of a jackal, was only able to say "his mother was a ja-" before he was cut off by the arrival of a Marine guard. But in the 2006 film, he was able to complete his sentence before the guard removed him from the building.
  • In the original, when Damien and Mrs. Baylock first met and were left alone, Baylock flatly said, "Have no fear little one. I am here to protect thee," while in the remake, Mrs. Baylock simply tells Damien her name and warmly assures him that she is there to protect him.
  • Jennings took more photos of the nanny and Brennan in the remake than in the original; one of them with a digital camera, a fact which he later used as evidence to Robert (when the two were discussing the premonitions in Jennings' photos) that it is not his camera that is responsible for the premonitions in the pictures.
  • In the 1976 film, the night after Damien attacked Katherine out of fear of the church, it was Robert who found it strange that Damien had never suffered any ailments, and Kathy who dismissed this. But in the 2006 film, it was Kate who found this strange and Robert who dismissed it.
  • In the original, Mrs. Baylock's watchdog was outside Damien's room the first time Robert encountered it, and was in the room the second time he encountered it. But in the remake, this was the other way round.
  • In the 1976 film, it was just Kathy and Damien who visited the zoo, and it was presumably as a treat for Damien. But in the 2006 film, Kate and Damien visited with Damien's school and Kate's friends, and it was a school trip for Damien's class.
  • In the original, when Damien arrived at the zoo and the animals noticed him, the giraffes fled away from him into the center of their enclosure, and the baboons attacked the car Kathy and Damien were riding in. But in the remake, the captive monkeys went into a fear-fuelled frenzy, and a gorilla tried to smash out of its enclosure in the primate exhibit, upon the sight of him.
  • In the original film, Father Brennan met Robert at a rugby field to tell him to meet him in Bishop's Park. But in the remake, it was at an opera.
  • The 2006 film shows two nightmares Kate has of Damien, as well as a scene in which Kate finds Damien making a sandwich in the kitchen after the first nightmare, which the original did not have.
  • In the original, Robert and Father Brennan met in a rural area of Bishop's Park. But in the remake, it was in a more urban area, under a bridge. Also, in the original they met there at 2:30 while in the remake it was 1:00.
  • In the 1976 film, in the scene in which Brennan instructs Robert to go to Bugenhagen in Megiddo, the storm did not start until after Robert left (the storm presumably starting due to Satan's anger with Brennan for threatening to foil the plot to ensure Damien fulfilled his destiny). But in the 2006 film, it started before Robert even arrived.
  • Bugenhagen's name is pronounced differently to how it was in the original films.
  • In the original film, the object which fell from the church roof and impaled and killed Brennan was a lightning rod, while in the remake it was a steel rod from a scaffolding on the church roof. Also, in the remake, a removed stained-glass window was lying on the scaffolding and smashed when the rod fell through it; thus, in the remake, several shards of glass from the window landed in Brennan's face and chest as well.
  • In the original, Robert noticed Father Brennan's death in a newspaper that an unknown caller instructed him to look at over the phone. But in the remake, Robert noticed it on a news website that Tom Portman gave him a link to in an email.
  • In the 1976 film, Damien was playing with snooker balls and this was what irritated Kathy to the point that she had Mrs. Baylock send him out. But in the remake, it was the noise from Damien's games console.
  • In the original, Damien used his tricycle to ride into Katherine and cause her to fall over the balcony. But in the remake, it was his scooter. Also, while it appeared to be accidental in the 1976 film, in the 2006 film, it appeared to be deliberate.
  • In the original film, the nun who Robert and Jennings interviewed about the fire that originally burnt down the hospital Damien was born in, was a nurse at the rebuilt hospital. But in the remake, she was outside the hospital and was apparently one of the survivors who were burnt by the fire.
  • In the 1976 film, Robert and Jennings travelled by foot from a country road down a hillside to the Subiaco monastery. But in the 2006 film, a monk in white took them across a river to the monastery by canoe.
  • In the original, there was some movement in Father Spiletto's left hand, but he was otherwise completely catatonic. But in the remake, Spiletto was still able to almost perfectly move his left hand, and there was still some movement in his head as well. Also, in the remake, more of Brennan's face was scarred from the fire than in the original.
  • In the originals film, Cerveteri was barren and windy, however in the 2006 remake, it was covered with snow.
  • In the original film, when Robert and Jennings unearth the jackal's body, it still has a large amount of flesh on it, but in the remake, it had decomposed to a complete skeleton. It is also noticeably smaller than in the original.
  • In the 1976 film, it was Robert who got his arm impaled on the graveyard fence while he and Jennings were trying to escape the Hellhounds. But in 2006 film, Jennings got his leg impaled on the fence instead.
  • In the remake, it is shown that when Mrs. Baylock arrived at the hospital to kill Kate, she brought Damien with her but left him outside of Kate's room.
  • In the original, Robert called Kathy, telling her to get ready to leave the hospital, moments before Mrs. Baylock arrived. While in the remake, it was after Mrs. Baylock came, but the call was missed.
  • In the 1976 film, Katherine died falling from a window after being frightened from Mrs. Baylock's arrival. In the 2006 film, Mrs. Baylock killed Katherine by injecting air from an empty syringe into her IV to induce an air embolism.
  • In the remake, the entrance into Megiddo is shown to be heavily guarded by the Israeli military.
  • Bugenhagen appears to be more mentally disturbed in the remake film than he did in the original films.
  • In the original, Bugenhagen forced Jennings to wait in another part of the ruins, as the former's explaining of how to use the Sacred Daggers to kill the Antichrist was for Robert Thorn only. But in the remake, Bugenhagen allowed Jennings to listen as well.
  • In the 1976 film, Jennings was decapitated by a sheet of glass that slid off a runaway truck. But in the 2006 film, he was decapitated by a large, metal falling sign when a hammer fell off a roof and knocked a screw out of the sign; causing it to swing down at him.
  • In the original, Robert trapped the watchdog by waiting until it wandered into a trapdoor in the basement, at which point Robert trapped it by closing the trapdoor. While in the remake, the watchdog chased Robert into the pantry, where Robert opened a trapdoor in the pantry floor in front of him, causing the watchdog to fall inside, then locked the trapdoor to trap it.
  • In the 1976 film, Mrs. Baylock attacked and tried to kill Robert until he killed her by stabbing her in the side of her neck with a carving fork. Whereas in the 2006 film, Mrs. Baylock followed Robert out into the estate's grounds, where Robert ran her over with his car.
  • In the remake, when Robert was about to stab Damien in the church, he showed more grief that he did in the original over the fact that he had to kill the boy he had raised as his son.
  • In the original, a detective and a policeman arrived at the church and shot Robert, while in the remake it was a squad of the Diplomatic Protection Group.
  • In the remake, the scene of Kate and Robert's funeral is shown in parallel to another scene, which shows the Pope dying as Cardinal Fabretti grieves.
  • In the original, Damien attended his adopted parents' funeral with both the US President and his wife. But in the remake, the president's wife is absent.

Cast[]

Trivia[]

  • Harvey Stephens, who portrayed Damien in the original Omen film, had a cameo in the 2006 remake as one of the reporters who questioned Robert about Damien's nanny's suicide when he arrived at the Embassy.
  • The film was released worldwide on 6 June, 2006 (to coincide with the date 06/06/06, which corresponds to the Number of the Beast) in order to spark interest and gain publicity.
  • When Robert and Jennings are in Cerveteri, some of the crosses marking old graves are upside-down. An inverted cross is generally regarded as the symbol of the Antichrist, and it served as an omen of death in Omen IV: The Awakening.

Errors[]

  • In the scene in which Kate brings the two-year-old Damien to the American Embassy in Rome, Damien is being carried in her arms when she meets Mike there. But when Kate is talking to Robert and Steven, Damien is nowhere to be seen.
  • Despite his status as an ambassador and diplomat, Robert's car doesn't have a diplomatic license plate.
  • In the newspaper about Robert's appointment to ambassador to England, the same text is repeated.
  • When the nanny turns and sees the Hellhound, there is a leash visible on the dog.
  • When Father Brennan visits Robert at the US Embassy in London, the US flags in the background can be seen resting on the floor. It is against US regulation to have the flag ever touch something beneath it, especially the floor.
  • When Mrs. Baylock first sees Damien, the picture of the hanging nanny on Damien's wall disappears between shots.
  • In the zoo scene, Damien's hat disappears and reappears between shots.
  • In the scene in Bishop's Park, it can be seen that the sign stating the location is fake, as one side of it blows off the Prague wall.
  • If one looks closely when the metal rod that kills Brennan falls through the stained glass window from the church roof, the window breaks before the rod appears.
  • The online newspaper account on Brennan's death that Tom Portman shows Robert has a grammatical error; it spells "yesterday's" as "yesterdays."
  • In the scenes in which Robert and Jennings investigate Brennan's apartment, and in which they speak with Bugenhagen, boom mics are visible.
  • Jennings states that Megiddo's name is derived from the word "Armageddon," but in actuality it is the other way round.
  • Jennings states that Megiddo is "just south of Jerusalem," but in real life it is actually much to the north.
  • When Robert abducts Damien in his car to kill him in a church, he starts his car by putting a key in the ignition. However, Robert's car is a 2006 Lexus GS, which doesn't have a conventional key with ignition, but instead a key-fob with push button start.
  • When Robert is driving to the church with Damien, and when the police are pursuing him, all of them are driving on the right-hand side of the road, instead of the left as they would in the UK.
  • Also, when Robert is driving with Damien to a church, after abducting him, to kill him, with the police in pursuit, Czech script ('Prague 2 Municipal District') is visible on shop fronts.
  • When driving off with Damien to kill the latter, the sides of Robert's car are noticeably damaged. But when Robert reaches the church, the car's sides are in perfect condition.
  • When the Diplomatic Protection Group arrive at the church, one officer raises a handgun and fires it. Only one shot is heard, but then another officer lowers his rifle, which is smoking as though it has been fired.
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