Omen III: The Final Conflict

 

 

I will just say that Sam Neill’s role as Damien in Omen III makes his role in Jurassic Park look like a high-art, Oscar-worthy performance by comparison.

Plot Summary

Damien Thorn (Sam Neill) is now 32 years old, and the filthy rich head of Thorn Industries. Thanks to him, Thorn has been single-handedly saving the world from droughts, famines, and wars that resulted from the Great Recession. Thorn gets himself named US Ambassador to England, the first step in his plan to work towards the Presidency and then take over the world. But the Scriptures predict the Second Coming of Christ at the same time. Will Damien kill the new Son of God, or will supposedly Italian monks manage to protect the baby and kill Damien? 

"Dear Lord, please send the holy velociraptors to help us hunt Damien!"

Nutrition Facts

Vitamin B-Acting: 85%

All the credit goes to Sam Neill. I’ll freely admit that I’ll take him as Damien any day over the two boys who played the young Damien in the previous movies. At least Sam Neill has actual acting talent. Trouble is, that talent couldn’t do much to alleviate the horrible lines Neill had to deliver.
 

The script is not all to blame, though. Neill overacts a lot. Now, he does do a much better job of being charming than the previous Damiens. I’ll give him that. But he still indulges in plenty of ham. His best moments occur whenever he gives a speech. I’ll give you an example from a scene in which he prays to Satan. As you read the dialogue, just imagine Neill glaring at a really ugly giant crucifix and speaking in a superior tone of voice: 

Nazarene, charlatan, what can you offer humanity? Since the hour you vomited forth from the gaping wound of a woman, you have done nothing but drown man's soaring desires in a deluge of sanctimonious morality. You've inflamed the pubertal mind of youth with your repellent dogma of original sin.

Gotta love that writing, huh?

Another great Damien moment is when he orders his followers to kill all baby boys born within a certain frame of time, a la King Herod. Picture Neill trying to imitate great speakers like Martin Luther King, Jr., but twisting his mouth grotesquely in the process:

I now command you to seek out and destroy the Nazarene child. Slay the Nazarene... and I shall reign forever. FAIIIL...and I perish. FAIIIL...and you shall perish.

Vitamin B-SFX: 60%

Again, not a lot of special effects, but when they appear, they are very bad. The lightning in the church ruins scene is positively cartoonish. This film also tends towards artsy-fartsy touches, like showing a shot of a crucifix Jesus shedding a bloody tear after Damien razzes him.

Then there’s the ending, when Damien lies dead on a stone slab in the churchyard. Jesus makes an appearance and jerkily spreads his arms in a poorly animated piece:
 

God does a really lame victory dance.

Vitamin Fun: 50%

This installment is rather tedious, and it shoves more Biblical quotes down your throat than the previous movies do. Damien’s speeches and the monks’ incompetent assassination attempts are easily the best moments in the movie.

Sugar: 10%

God triumphs in the end, but we may all be laughing too hard (or asleep) to notice.

Plot Fiber: 0%

Like its predecessors, this movie suffers from a million plot holes. However, Omen III goes a step further by contradicting the earlier movies. In the original Omen, Bugenhagen clearly explains to Robert Thorn that Robert must stab Damien with seven sacred daggers—each dagger stab will extinguish a part of Damien’s soul. But in Omen III, just one dagger will suffice.

So, if only one dagger will do the job, why can’t the monks succeed in killing Damien? These have got to be some of the least butt-kicking monks to exist in Hollywood. According to Hollywood, all monks have at least some training in martial arts or basic weaponry, but these monks are at least as dumb as the satanic minions. 

"I'm riding a white horse. That ought to guarantee moral victory!"

Here’s what the monks do wrong:

1) They publicly announce their intention to kill Damien…while Damien walks past them.

2) Like Satan’s minions throughout the films thus far, the monks cook up impossibly convoluted schemes to trap and kill Damien. This results in Damien playing Whack-a-Monk. For instance, one monk tries to ride down a cable a la Tarzan while Damien is interviewed in a TV studio. Damien sparks a fire, and when the monk swings through it, he burns up. 

The TV studio--as you can see, the '70s' influence lingered into the early '80s.

The second attempt involves luring “Damien” out into a ruined church in the countryside, then cornering him. (This is the fake lightning scene.) One of Damien’s minion Rottweilers, however, tricks the monk into thinking the man is Damien, when it’s actually one of their fellow monks. The monks stab their fellow, then walk straight into a pit and die.

The final attempt involves tricking Damien away from the other hunters during a fox hunt, and then cornering him on a bridge. Would have worked well, but the monks forgot to bring a gun to shoot all the evil foxhounds. 

Oops.

Why didn’t the monks just rush Damien in a crowd when they had the chance?

Enough about the monks. The minions are marginally smarter than the monks in the movie, but the first killing was rather pointless. In order to become Ambassador to England, Damien’s minions have to first kill the current one. The ambassador is walking along in the park, then a Rottweiler Jedi-mind-tricks him into killing himself. But does the ambassador simply take a gun to his head? No. The Rottweiler apparently told the ambassador to set up an elaborate gun rig in his office. He positions a handgun on his desk, ties the trigger to the doorknob, and calls a press conference. When the reporters open the door to begin the conference, it sets off the gun and he dies. Pretty impressive, that a dog can deliver such detailed instructions to a human. Heck, that Rottweiler probably could have written a better script!

"I graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard!"