Relive the horror?

IT takes a daring soul to risk the curse of the horror remake and the Curse of “The Omen” in one creepy project. But director John Moore felt it was his solemn duty to warn moviegoers that Damien, that devilish 5-year-old boy, is once again on his way.

Moore began his career shooting the news and working as an assistant cameraman for Oscar-nominated directors Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan. After making high-profile commercials for Adidas, Guinness and Sega, the 36-year-old Irish filmmaker moved on to direct the adventure films “Behind Enemy Lines” (2001) and “Flight of the Phoenix” (2004).

A devoted fan of the original Gregory Peck-Lee Remick “Omen” released in 1976, Moore enthusiastically signed on to remake it, despite the mere 10-month window until its must-hit June 6, 2006, release date. So he rushed off to Prague with Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles as a younger version of the doomed Thorns, horror icon Mia Farrow as the nanny from hell, and Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick as the spooky little kid you really don’t want in your Daddy and Me group.

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What was your experience of watching the original “Omen”?

It was on late-night television. I was 9. In those days, they would always take a break for the news at 10 o’clock, and normally it would be a real drag. When they took a break from “The Omen” I was so grateful. It reminded me it was a movie. But of course, the next day you look up Revelations, and -- oh, my God! -- you feel this new rush of terror, because it’s right there in the Bible.

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Did you always know that you’d stick pretty close to the original story?

I knew this was definitely a remake. To me, “The Omen” was a bit like a Shakespeare text -- a great story. So we weren’t going to screw around with that. The thing was, how do you get people to take it seriously today? Because a lot of the horror remakes are sort of nudge-nudge. How do you contemporize it and make people within the first 10 minutes drop their expectations and look at it anew?

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One way you did that was by opening the film with recent disaster footage of Katrina, 9/11 ...

The tsunami, Abu Ghraib, the war in Iraq, Enron, the Columbia shuttle. The sad part is there was no shortage of examples of catastrophe interpretable as evil to pick from. And I got a bit of flak in New York, as you would expect, for using 9/11 imagery.

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Did you have any hesitation before you put in the shot of the towers on fire?

No. You can’t refer to what happened on 9/11 as anything less than a singularly defining moment for this millennium. I thought it was a genuine way of illustrating how we’re going to hell in a handbasket right now.

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If you knew that you only had a few months left, what would you spend your time doing?

Probably apologizing to a lot of people. [Laughs] I’ll take a 12-steps kind of karma approach.

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Did you have any freaky, curse of “The Omen” incidents during filming like the ones that befell the original?

Yeah, there were a bunch of them. It’s kind of a sick thing because we had this publicist on set who [would] hear about an accident and it’s like, “Are they still bleeding? Can we get a crew over there?” It does make great PR grist, but when it’s happening to you it’s not fun. The number comes up and that’s kind of goofy -- you see it on a food receipt or check. Then we lost a lot of film on one scene that got completely destroyed. Two days’ work, 13,000 feet. None of the lab technicians could explain it.

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What did you tell Julia about doing the big stunt fall from the balcony? Did you do it first so that she would feel more comfortable?

No! [Laughs] I’m afraid of heights. She’s a pretty [gutsy] chick. She didn’t blink. And, man, it’s scary. She was up 63 feet in a four-point harness, free falling and a camera right over her -- they weigh 130 pounds -- so if this snaps you’re really in a ... sandwich. And she did it twice. The first real full-blown rehearsal is the one we used in the film. Because the look on her face -- she’s genuinely terrified.

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Mia Farrow’s performance as Mrs. Baylock makes Mary Poppins look like Nurse Ratched!

Once I knew Mia was on board, the big thing we decided was let’s make Mrs. Baylock as deceptive as possible. I wanted to make Mia seem like she’d been sent down from Heaven to help the Thorns in their hour of need. It kind of makes your skin crawl, doesn’t it?

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What’s going on in the scene where she’s feeding Damien strawberries?

Oh, it’s a whole sexual thing. She’s a demon groupie. She’s got her hair down. There’s something hugely inappropriate about what’s going on. He plays it so innocent -- how could he do it otherwise? -- but she’s trembling with sexual excitement.

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How did you direct Seamus to such malevolent creepiness?

I cannot take credit for that. He really has nothing to say in the movie, so you’re casting him off a look. That was his .44 Magnum, and we always knew we could get out that gun. I’d say, “When you walk past Julia, look at her and say, ‘I really hate you,’ but don’t use any words.”

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Do you have any kids yourself?

No, not yet. Although my wife’s just fell pregnant [laughs]. Weird, isn’t it?

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Congratulations. Did the marketing woman get you to conceive in time to deliver for the DVD release?

Right, exactly. [Laughs] We’re gonna call the kid Damien and brand him with the sixes. Anything for the movie!

-- Jay A. Fernandez