Movie cliché #207: All bad kids are possessed by the devil!

Or else they are the devil, as this virtual clone of The Omen shows us. The Calling, a direct-to-video scare flick, is so faithful to its obvious source material that after about an hour I began to wonder where it would diverge. Sure enough, it's right there at the end, when mom (Laura Harris) can't take it any more and decides to off her Satanic son (Alex Roe-Brown) for real. Never mind the cultists (including her husband, Richard Lintern) -- a group that makes up virtually the entire populace of the Isle of Man, the odd choice for the setting of this picture.

The My Son Is Satan movie could have stood for a clever shakeup, but The Calling is strictly by the book. While it's pedestrian, it's not badly made. Roe-Brown is so convincing that I wouldn't let my kids play with him for fear of having their hearts ripped out or worse, and filmcritic.com favorite Alice Krige is a welcome addition to the cast (though sadly underutilized here). Harris, cast as the put-upon mom, is the weak link, obviously chosen for her looks and little else. She's as convincing a mom as Gwyneth Paltrow was in Hush. Yes, I'm still trying to forget that one.