A bloodless horror

Someone once had an excellent idea for a film to scare the pants off us: what if Gregory Peck (who represented nothing but good sense and respectability) adopted a baby boy, and that cute ickle shock-headed newborn turned out to be Satan? And Satan wanted Mummy and Daddy dead, so he could inherit everything they had — in fact ultimately inherit the earth and bring about his true aim, which we call Armageddon? What if the only thing Peck could do, to stop him, would be to murder him — or try to? Wouldn’t that be a great movie?

Well, yes, it would and it was. The Omen has been making people jump out of their skins for 30 years. And now it’s been remade, but with one crucial ingredient missing: surprise.

To remake, almost in replica, a horror film that depends upon surprise is rather baffling. Excuse me for pointing out the obvious but since anyone who has seen the original movie knows exactly what’s coming, doesn’t that rather spoil the shock factor? An element on which, let’s face it, a horror film rather depends?

It’s odd that the director of this remake, John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines), should have chosen to miss the opportunity to terrify even those of us who had seen the original film. He could have led us to expect the original shocks, and then have delivered something new, unexpected and more disturbing. An audience that thought it knew what was going to happen, and was then completely wrong-footed, could be truly unnerved.

But no. When I saw the original Omen for the first time I saw more of the sofa cushion held in front of my face than of the television screen. It would be more accurate to say I heard the film rather than saw it.