The Final Conflict

The horror in this movie is so bad it's funny! Every time a monk gets anywhere near Damien the poor guy falls off a bridge or drops down a hole or just slips on a banana peel or something.

On the other hand, the smart and pretty lady reporter gets her hands on Damien right away, without any trouble. It's said that Sam Neill who plays Damien and Lisa Harrow who plays Kate Reynolds were actually falling in love for real as this movie was being made. It really shows! Aside from being just gorgeous, Lisa Harrow was a good actress. You can see that her character has at least three sides to her. As a reporter, she's intrigued by Damien's vast wealth and growing political power. As a mother, she's frightened of his influence over her troubled teenage son. And as a woman, she can't help responding to the sheer excitement of his darkly sexual charisma. But what makes this interesting is that the story line always treats her character with respect. Her sexual feelings don't cancel out her heart or her intelligence, they just make her more mature and sympathetic.

Why is it that major stars like Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan never play anyone half as interesting as this?

A fairly good end to the trilogy, although it's a shame the threatened armaggeddon never comes off (as in the later novels). Sam Neill puts in a good performance as the Devil's son and is surrounded by decent character actors. However, how Jerry Goldsmith didn't win an Oscar for the score, I will never know. It's absolutely amazing and proves music really can improve a film (just imagine a score-less Psycho, for example).

Firstly, it has a seemingly fool-proof concept: the Antichrist, now a successful corporate CEO, is appointed U.S. Ambassador to England, AND president of the UN youth council. It practically writes itself. But, no, social commentary isn't brought into it; he doesn't kill his way into the U.S. Presidency, and the country is never thrown into a third world war. And to think I believed in him! You think this might also present a good chance for some overacting- but, once again, only missed opportunities. It was quite talky; Damien plays it cool, and Sam Neill's performance mostly involved making sinister expressions (at which he's a natural, granted,) and, frankly, the big lines he delivers come out kind of funny-sounding when modulated through his fake American accent (he has one of these in Jurassic Park, too, but at least that role didn't call for any serious acting.) I blame the director more than my man Sam, but I've seen some pretty terrible movies salvaged by one good performance.

Why, this film even let down my bloodlusting side. It opens with a nice, gruesome death, but subsequent killings are either too silly to even guffaw at, or just plain uninspired- especially the climax.

After watching the latest Damien movie The First Omen (2024), a prequel to the original The Omen with Gregory Peck I decided to rewatch all the movies about the Antichrist Damien Thorn. The prequel was not bad but not as good as the first movie. The second one was of the same quality as the prequel. The Final Conflict (The third Omen) was like I feared, just watchable but nothing else. Sam Neil is this time playing an adult Damien Thorn. Nothing wrong with his acting but you just don't get that evil feeling when Damien was a kid. Also the ominous soundtrack that was so typical in the other movies is this time of poor quality which results in just an average movie. Rarely sequels are getting better and since I just checked the ratings for the fourth movie I think I'll leave it at that. It was a fun ride, good to remember a classic horror movie. Sometimes you have to let it go instead of trying to milk a good story.

In the first two Omen films, we were presented with a boy learning to adjust to his unusual personality and his future position in the destiny of the cosmos, but in this last film, Damien is in complete control as he prepares mankind for a " paradise of pain. " Sam Neill exudes a aura of amoral humanity, befriending a female reporter and her son while he seeks to defeat God; One very good sequence has Damien describing man as being naturally evil, claiming that God seeks to keep man from becoming truly innocent. Even though the atmosphere bounces from materialistic to spiritual, the film still gets a powerful message about corporations and their link to politics to the audience. Again, Sam Neill shows us a flawed, but arrogant man-beast, who pushes his way through without a backward glance. With such a performance, it is no wonder that Sam Neill is a great actor.