While I'm On the Subject

While I'm on the subject of portentous bunk, I checked out the trailer for the remake of The Omen. I wonder if people working on all these horror remakes (going all the way back to the remake of Psycho) understand what it means to try too hard. Horror and humor are pretty closely related in structure (in one the payoff is a scream; in the other, a laugh). These remakes, as well as a lot of contemporary horror pictures, are like someone who repeats a well-loved joke and then spends the next ten minutes elbowing you in the ribs going "Get it? Get it?"

It's especially dangerous for a film like The Omen to go over the top. The story is at bottom an Idiot Plot. There would be no story if the antagonist (Spoiler alert for people who live in caves or haven't seen the movie poster: the antagonist is the Devil) weren't a total idiot. The Devil doesn't make sensible moves given his goal of keeping Damien Thorn's identity a secret. He lets key figures in his conspiracy continue breathing long enough to spill their guts, and then kills them in ways guaranteed to maximize exposure instead of minimizing it. Even at the end, instead of killing Robert Thorn with an easily arranged plane crash, the Devil has to wait until R.T. has dragged the devil's sprog to a church so that the cops can shoot him, thus fulfilling the poorly known prophecy found in the appendix to the gnostic apocrypha, "And so it shall come to pass, that Thorn the Elder shall take his son unto an unlocked church to pierce him with many piercings. And yea, verily at that time, the constabularies shall follow after him, aiming their guns and gnashing their teeth. And it shall come to pass that they shall warn him with many warnings to lay down his gun so they can quietly hush this up anon, yet Thorn the Elder, well versed in the rules of diplomatic immunity, does prepare to slay the Child Beast but is himself slain anon by many bullets. And there shall be much paperwork and covering up."

That's a direct quote.

Getting back to my original point, and I did have one, The Omen is an idiot plot, and much depends on the audience failing to notice this. Consequently, the filmmaker must get the viewer to identify strongly with the Thorns and their problem--"What would you do if you discovered that your little boy might be the Beast of the Apocalypse?" But it's hard for viewers to identify with characters when the movie keeps pulling the audience to one side and telling them "See how scary this is? See how weird all this is? Isn't that little boy freaky looking? Check out all that CGI slow-motion breaking glass! That just screams scary, doesn't it?" How can the audience reach fear, or forget the flaws in the plot, when the movie keeps reminding them that what they're watching is only a movie? Richard Donner, who directed the original film, understood this, and he worked hard to maintain a feeling of verisimilitude. The makers of the new film, based on the trailer, don't seem to get it. Not that I'll shed a tear. I root for remakes to fail. If enough of them eat it, maybe producers will spend some bucks on something new (preferably by me).