If Robert Thorn has a devil of a time smuggling a bundle of very long, very sharp, very unmistakable knives onto an airplane in "The Omen," we never see it.

		"The Omen" Rating: R for disturbing violent content, graphic images and some language. Starring: Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles. Director: John Moore. 'The Omen' Web site

The 1976 horror film about the Antichrist has been updated, with cell phones, digital cameras and e-mail, but post-9/11 security precautions seem to have gone unnoticed. Same with DNA tests, which could determine if little Damien is really Katherine Thorn's biological child.

Forget that talk-show favorite, "Who's your daddy?" How about, "What was your mother?"

As the movie opens, Katherine's husband, Robert, is told at a hospital in Rome that their newborn has died. When a priest offers a motherless infant to Robert, he takes the boy and passes him off as the Thorns' own, a decision that will prove deadly in ways he cannot begin to imagine.

"The Omen," a 1976 thriller starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, has been remade using David Seltzer's original screenplay, updated to reflect real-life catastrophes, which seem to point to the arrival of the Antichrist.

Some changes have been made, with Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles obviously younger than the original stars, but the bones of the story remain the same. In fact, some dialogue and camera angles are duplicated, but this "Omen" is physically darker, with many scenes set in severe shadows.

As in the original, the child who seems a godsend slowly begins to puzzle, alienate and then terrify his parents. Strange deaths seem to surround the Thorns -- a car fire, a public suicide, an impaling -- with Katherine growing increasingly dismayed by her feelings about her son, including a suspicion he is trying to kill her.

"The Omen" builds to a chilling final scene, which has one of the best sinister smiles of all time. But that is the problem with "The Omen," since it so slavishly follows the first. Even if you've never seen the 1976 version, the premise of both movies is well known, which takes some sting out of the surprise.

Still disturbing, on so many levels, is a scene in which the boy (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) is dragged away for slaughter. Schreiber makes for a more vulnerable Robert than the commanding Peck, while Stiles has a harder edge than Remick and a different sort of horrible hospital confrontation with Mrs. Baylock.

Mrs. Baylock is played, in a bit of clever casting, by Mia Farrow, who starred in another movie about Satan's spawn called "Rosemary's Baby." Also in supporting roles are David Thewlis as a photographer, Pete Postlethwaite as a prophesying priest and Michael Gambon as an archaeologist. Good actors, all.

Young Davey-Fitzpatrick seems a tad older than his 1976 counterpart; like him, he's not given many lines but must scowl, pout, wig out, stare and creep out critters and children.

"The Omen" is filled with disturbing notions and images, from a decapitation to blood-thirsty dogs and a man disfigured by a fire, all of which make this highly inappropriate for children. Sure, the new "Omen" gives an updated spin to the concept of evildoers, but does the world really need a double dose of Damien?