I was really looking forward to this and my anticipation didn’t drop when I heard it was to be practically a carbon copy remake a la Gus Van Sant’s Psycho. My heart did sink, on the other hand, seeing Marco Beltrami’s name on the score rather than Jerry Goldsmith’s. Beltrami’s score here is okay, and he does incorporate some of Goldsmith’s old score, as John Ottman has done on Halloween H20 and Superman Returns for John Carpenter’s and John Williams’ scores respectively. I want to say that I would’ve rathered he simply adapt, re-arrange, etc Goldsmith’s original score like Danny Elfman did with Bernard Herrmann’s “Psycho” score for the 1998 movie – but if you stick around during the credits here and hear the new “Ave Satini”, which does finally get some airtime, maybe you’ll hear why I don’t think that would’ve worked either.

Aside from the score, though, I really don’t find anything too wrong with this remake. I love Julia Stiles and I think she, Mia Farrow, Liev Schrieber, Pete Postlethwaite, David Thewlis and Michael Gambon are all pretty perfectly cast, as is, of course, the new Damien, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick. The movie is quite beautifully and creepily shot, and all the classic scenes (read: death scenes) are recreated, in some cases with nifty twists – I was particularly impressed by Thewlis’ demise. I don’t know if I’ll watch it again, but I can’t find much fault with it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 2:24 am in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.