A pop eclipse now

One can’t fault some farsighted suit at Fox for realizing the possibilities of reawakening the moribund ‘70s franchise that detailed the demonic aspirations of Damien the Antichrist as he whacks his way up the rungs of power in pursuit of the End Times goal of … well, harshing everyone’s (and I mean everyone’s) mellow.

And, seemingly, everything started off so promisingly. Well, promising, in that the filmmakers would try something new with the material. A new prologue has been added in which the Vatican puts six-n-six-n-six together and realizes that, hey … The End of Days is nigh! Then they go back to bed.

Down the street at a Roman Catholic hospital, American diplomat Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber) is advised by a shady priest that the child his wife (Julia Stiles) has just given birth to is dead. Fortunately, he has a replacement model just so conveniently lying around. Never trust a priest willing to just give away a boy. A montage plays out as Damien grows up into a pouting, hollow-eyed little 5-year-old and Daddy is now the ambassador to Great Britain, stationed in London. Mommy just wanders about looking like somebody has just goosed her.

Somewhere around this point, the filmmakers must have looked at their watches and found the time rapidly spiraling toward the inevitable 06:06:06 and realized that they were wasting too much time mucking about trying to be creative, and quickly resorted to just falling back on David Seltzer’s original script (must be nice to be paid twice for the same piece of work).

Iconic set pieces are scaled back to the point that the project takes on the air of a made-for-TV movie, with cheap jolts delivered by way of clumsy dream sequences. If you’ve seen the original, there’s nothing new to see here. If you haven’t, you might enjoy this … although I’d say rent the original instead.

They made the deadline, though. Cheers.