Friday, November 13, 2009

Omen (Sung horn)


(2003)

Three friends & coworkers, Beem, Dan, and Big, all encounter fate on the same day. After crashing his car near her house, Dan meets an old woman who can predict the future. While in a traffic jam, Big encounters a strange little boy who is selling flower garlands to car passengers.


The boy offers to trade him a small dog figurine for one of the toy cars Dan has on display in his car. Dan refuses the offer but later finds the swap has been made anyway. Beem meets a girl named Oam who he feels an immediate connection to, like they've known each other for a long time. Eventually all these things connect together but getting there is a slow process.


The process of bringing the stories together is so long and confusing that by the time they reveal that one of the trio is destined to die, I just didn't care. The film isn't creepy or insightful but I have to say I've seen much worse so I didn't totally bag it.


The biggest problem, the old lady should have been way more creepy. Isn't that a rule in horror, if you have an old lady with psychic powers she's gotta be creepy. They missed a golden opportunity to turn this into an actual horror movie. I really don't know what else to say about this slightly less than mediocre J-horror. The concept was good it just didn't carry over all that well.

4 comments:

JPX said...

You have certainly been doing a terrific job uncovering all these J-horror films I never heard of before. After reading many of your J-horror reviews I have concluded that most J-horror is crap with a few exceptions - just like American horror films. The plot of Omen sounds promising enough but your description suggests that it was a tedious exercise. I've found that a lot of these J-horror films are glacially paced, which is fine if there's a payoff, but it sounds like there are few rewards in this one.

Octopunk said...

I'm even bored by the premise: only one of them is going to die? Yawn. Hit snooze alarm. Go back to sleep.

Johnny Sweatpants said...

Audition is the perfect example of a glacially paced J-Horror flick with a big payoff.

"Big" is not an acceptable name by the way.

Catfreeek said...

Because Sex and the City already used Big? JSP, I didn't know you were
a closet fan.

Audition had a great pay off.

Malevolent

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