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The son of Satan has arrived.

No, no, this has nothing to do with the child of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. It's just another recycled big screen horror flick. Horror movies are so hot right now, Hollywood just can't stop cranking out remakes along with the originals. And, sure enough, just in time for its 30-year anniversary, here's a whole new version of The Omen, starring Mia Farrow, Julia Stiles, Pete Postlethwaite, and Liev Schreiber.

The "son of Satan" plotline has opened the door for 20th Century Fox to vigorously market this new Omen to Christian audiences, just as Sony did with The Da Vinci Code. This week, I received a pamphlet in the mail that was filled with Bible verses that relate, in some way, to The Omen. And this "tract" also pointed out that the movie opens on 06.06.06. I was not spooked.

Neither are many of the Christian press critics who have seen the film.

Peter T. Chattaway (Christianity Today Movies) gives it only two stars, even though he finds it to be "extremely faithful to the original. … Director John Moore, whose last film (Flight of the Phoenix) was also a remake, does not stray far from his source, though he does make a few slight changes."

Is it all just thrills and chills? Or does it actually mean something? Chattaway says it "taps into every parent's fear that the babies they dote on will grow up to become children who don't like them; it works because it presents a worst-case scenario of what can happen when children get older and develop their own separate identities, including friendships and interior lives that are not what their parents would wish for them."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says it's "skillfully crafted and well-acted," and that it differs from The Da Vinci Code in that it "does not attack core Christian beliefs, though its horror-film treatment of religion is obviously sensationalized." Overall, he finds it "a fairly decent, if occasionally lurid, thriller."

"It's still creepy after all these years," writes Steve Beard (Thunderstruck), who offers excerpts from interviews with the cast and director. "While some will speak with condescending tones about the superiority of the original version with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, the performances of Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Mia Farrow, and David Thewlis were engaging and spooky. While the very premise of the film … will strike some as heretical or preposterous, it will definitely make for interesting conversation about the end of the world as we know it."

Most mainstream critics are calling this one a bad Omen.

Instead of talking about whether or not they can play a part in saving the world, most moviegoers spent the weekend talking about Jennifer Aniston and her tabloid-headline romance with Vince Vaughn. The two actors star together in The Break-Up, currently No. 1 at the box office.

Critics, meanwhile, are wishing the movie would just go away.

Peter T. Chattaway (Christianity Today Movies) says it's "a romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor particularly funny. To some degree, this is intentional, since the story concerns the end of a relationship rather than the beginning of one; indeed, the filmmakers have called it an 'anti-romantic comedy.' But even given that premise, this movie represents one huge wasted opportunity."

He says the script "doesn't create characters so much as it falls back on stereotypes: men are pigs who would rather drink beer and play video games all day than do anything romantic, while women play passive-aggressive head games and try to change the men in their lives—and representatives of both genders … agree that the best thing to do after you have broken up with someone is to have sex with some really hot stranger, just to annoy your ex-partner."

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June (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50