Franchises: The Omen. The Omen (2006)

I didn't even realize that this film was being made until May of 2006 when, after finishing my first year of college, I was waiting around in an airport in Nashville to kick off my summer break by flying to Orlando for a week. I picked up a magazine (Entertainment Weekly, I think), just happened to turn to the back of the issue where it talked about upcoming summer movies, and saw that one of the films coming out in June was The Omen. Within a split-second, my mind shuffled through the idea that maybe it was a re-release of the original or another sequel before, upon reading the piece, realizing that it was a remake. This surprised me on two levels. One, even though I didn't, and still don't, keep up with movie news that closely, I did read IMDB on a regular basis and never saw anything about this film's production. Two, thinking about it, this was the first really popular horror film of the 1970's and 80's that got put through the remake machine. At this point, you'd had the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead but those films were much less mainstream and more on a cult level, whereas The Omen was a bonafide blockbuster back in 1976 and had remained a well-known title. I think it also affected me more personally because, with those two other films, I didn't see them until after the remakes were out (and in the case of the former, I saw the remake first), but The Omen was a movie I'd watched many times and it had become one of my favorite horror films. I wasn't outraged when I heard it was being remade but it did make me begin to realize that no name horror film from the 70's and 80's, no matter how big in stature, was safe from being remade, a notion that was confirmed for me when I learned of Rob Zombie's Halloween later that year (which also affected me personally since John Carpenter's original is another movie I have a nostalgic attachment to). Regardless, this wasn't a film I had any interest in seeing, in the theater or anywhere else. I loved the original so much and felt that it was done well enough, so I had no interest in seeing someone else attempt to do the same thing, despite how well they may have done it. Other than some TV spots and a brief glimpse of it on cable one day, I stuck to my guns and, like Omen IV: The Awakening, probably never would have seen it had it not been for this blog. Having failed any finding anywhere online to watch Omen IV, I went looking for this film and was, thankfully, successful, so I didn't have to spend money on it. Going into it, I was expecting to get a major sense of deja vu since I'd heard that this was a virtual shot-for-shot remake, not unlike Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho; I just didn't realize how accurate that assessment would be. While not quite as egregious as what Van Sant did, and certainly more well-made than Omen IV, this is still a prime example of what a remake should not be, which is a virtual Xerox of the original, only one with weaker actors, less-inspired direction, and an overall hollow, soulless feel to it.

David Seltzer

There is no point in me giving a plot synopsis because it is the same exact story: an American diplomat in Rome is told that his son died in childbirth, adopts an orphaned baby boy without telling his wife, becomes Ambassador to Great Britain, strange and disturbing occurrences begin to happen once little Damien turns five years old, the Ambassador is warned by a priest that his child is the son of the devil and that he must die before being killed himself, his wife begins to lose her mind and becomes intolerant of her own son before he, intentionally or not, puts her in the hospital, the Ambassador is contacted by an English photographer who shows him signs that supernatural forces are at work, they travel to Rome to investigate Damien's past, discover evidence that proves he's probably the Antichrist, etc. There are tweaks to the story here and there, as with any remake, so it's not a shot-for-shot remake, but it certainly is a beat-for-beat one. In fact, it gets even worse when the movie enters its second half. While the first half was a virtual copy of the original film, there was still enough fresh stuff thrown in that I could tolerate it, but once Keith Jennings contacts Robert Thorn about the circumstances surrounding Father Brennan's death, it plays out so much like the original that I could predict what was going to be said next because I've seen the original so many times and 98% of the time, I was right. That's not good, and it only reiterates the pointless feel to this movie. Even more baffling is that the sole person who's given writing credit is David Seltzer, who also wrote the original. This is a guy who didn't have anything to do with the sequels because he said he's not interested in doing them as a writer but, apparently, he's okay with Xeroxing one of his scripts and adding in little touches to make it just a tad bit different. Head-scratching doesn't even begin to describe this situation.

Like Richard Donner, this was one of the first films for John Moore, an Irish-born director who started out making short films and commercials in Ireland before making the jump to movies; unlike Donner, though, Moore's filmography, which is still pretty small at this point, hasn't been nearly as well-received. I've heard some good things about his first film, Behind Enemy Lines (which he got to direct because 20th Century Fox was impressed by his directing job on a commercial for the Sega Dreamcast), but I can't say the same about anything else he's done, which include Flight of the Phoenix with Dennis Quaid, Max Payne with Mark Wahlberg, which is hated by most fans of the game for being a very poor adaptation of it, and A Good Day to Die Hard, which is, at this point, the only Die Hard I haven't seen but I've heard is the worst by far. And yet, Moore has managed to become something of a lower key Michael Bay in that, despite all of the negative critical and fan reception his movies have garnered, they've been very successful (A Good Day to Die Hard has been his biggest hit so far), and that includes The Omen, which made $119.5 million on a $25 million budget (I don't think it deserved to earn that much money but that's another matter). In fact, Flight of the Phoenix, another remake, has been the only film of his that's out-and-out bombed, which could be a testament to how his biggest successes have been movies with ties to popular products and franchises, rather than due to anything he himself brings to the table. Regardless, he's had enough success to where it doesn't seem like he's going to go away any time soon, with his next film being I.T., a thriller starring Pierce Brosnan (his first wholly original movie since Behind Enemy Lines, so we'll see how that goes).

Speaking of Pierce Brosnan, he was one of the people considered for the role of Robert Thorn (as well as Jim Carrey, oddly enough) and, God, do I wish he or anybody else with some charisma would've gotten it instead of this plank of wood named Liev Schreiber. I thought Schreiber was okay in his supporting role in the Scream movies but, man, does he flounder in the role that Gregory Peck excelled in! His basic problem is that, except for the scenes where he's learned that his son died after being born and at the end when he's finding it hard to stab his son to death, he shows no damn emotion! See that look on his face in the photo? He has that same, blank expression for almost the entire movie. Even when he discovers that his son was actually murdered as soon as he was born or learns that his wife has just died, he shows so little emotion in his face and his reactions that you'd think he'd been taken over by one of the body snatchers. What's more, while Peck's version of Thorn was smart enough to realize that there was something odd about Damien in how he'd never been sick a day in his life, Schreiber doesn't pick up on it at all and, like Kathy in the original, dismisses it as Damien just being a healthy boy. The difference, though, is that it felt like Kathy was in denial, not wanting to admit that there was something wrong with her son, while Thorn just comes across as dumb here. And even worse, they still have him go from wanting Damien to die to wanting nothing to do with stabbing a child, saying that Bugenhagen could be wrong about his being the Antichrist, within a scene transition. That was my only major problem with the character in the original but Peck's portrayal was so rich that I was able to come up with possible reasons for this sudden change of heart, whereas Schreiber, again, just seems like a moron. In fact, they make it even worse here by having Thorn tell Keith Jennings that there is no God or devil, in spite of everything that he's seen and experienced (chief among them the damn jackal bones in the crypt purported to be the final resting place of Damien's mother, which corresponds with what Father Brennan told him) and how he did seem to believe the devil when he remembered Brennan's poem and said that he wanted Damien dead. The only thing about Thorn in this version that's kind of interesting is seeing how he got the job of Ambassador to Great Britain when the previous one, whom he was serving under as deputy, died in apparent freak accident and how he himself feels that it may be a case of nepotism since he also happens to be the President's godson... and, guess what? Never mentioned again after the opening, so it ended up being completely pointless.

Julia Stiles is a little bit more interesting than Schreiber in her role of Kate Thorn, mainly because she's the one who picks up on the notion that there's something very strange about Damien. She not only mentions how he's never been sick a day in his life like normal kids but also talks about how distant he is and how she can't reach him. This version makes it more clear that, as time goes on, she starts to fear Damien, especially when she begins having bizarre and disturbing dreams centering around him and all of the unsettling events start piling up as well. You get a look at the strain that this is having not only on Kate but on her and Thorn's marriage as well, which was already a little rocky due to his working all the time and not being around to take Damien off her hands every once in a while, especially when she reveals to him that she's pregnant. She's much more forceful about it than Kathy was in the original: while she asked her husband if he would agree to an abortion, Kate just comes out and tells him that she's having one and that she doesn't want any more children. The biggest difference between the two versions of Mrs. Thorn, though, is her death scene: instead of being thrown out the hospital window, here Mrs. Baylock creates an air bubble in her IV tube, causing her to die from air embolism. This makes her death much more disturbing to watch since it's long and drawn out and also because she's aware of it the whole time, with Baylock muffling her screams as she watches the air bubble head down the tube towards her bloodstream. In fact, it's the most disturbing scene in the film, by far. But, all that said, Stiles is no Lee Remick in the acting department and so, despite how much they try, I'm ultimately not that affected by her death, as unsettling as it is, especially given Thorn's lackluster reaction upon hearing about it. (I know I keep harping on this but, man, Gregory Peck's eyes welled up with tears and he hung up the phone and began sobbing, which affected me considerably, while Schreiber just sits there with a blank stare and slowly puts the phone down in his lap. I don't remember him even sniffling.)

One of the film's major problems in sticking so close to the original is that the actors, as talented as the majority of them are, are unable to bring much new to the table and mostly can only show up on set and go through the motions of those that came before them. Nowhere is that more true than in David Thewlis' casting as photographer Keith Jennings. Except become the first person to drop the F-bomb in an Omen movie in a couple of his lines as well as maybe feel a little more hip (mainly through his clothes and equipment) than David Warner's, admittedly, old-fashioned portrayal, he honestly is only able to do the same things that Warner did beat-for-beat: hang around several events where Robert Thorn is present, get his camera smashed by him accidentally, discover bizarre marks in his photographs that foretell the deaths of others, including his own, contact Thorn, show him this stuff and other bizarre evidence he discovered at Father Brennan's home, and journey with him to Italy to investigate Damien's past, discover proof that he's the Antichrist (at least, for him), and head to Jerusalem, where he tries to do what Thorn refuses to and gets decapitated for his trouble. In fact, the only other new aspects of this version's portrayal of Jennings that I can think of is how, because it's 2006, he's able to look at digital versions of his photographs, how Bugenhagen doesn't make him wait outside when he's showing Thorn the daggers like he did before, and the slightly different way in which he dies, although it still involves his head getting sliced off. If you can't tell, I'm really struggling to come up with anything else to say about him here, and it also doesn't help that I'm a bigger fan of Warner than Thewlis in general.

When I saw one of the TV spots for this film, one thing that immediately caught my attention was the appearance of Pete Postlethwaite as Father Brennan. I was really happy to see that he was still getting work since I enjoyed him in not only The Lost World: Jurassic Park but also Amistad when I saw it in high school. I'm really sad that he's gone now because he was an actor I always liked watching and, even though he doesn't have much more to do here other than fill the shoes of Patrick Troughton, he makes the most of what he's given to do and is also able to bring some different nuances to the role. When he warns Robert Thorn about Damien, he comes across as more composed than Troughton, although still quite terrified, and his dialogue makes it clearer that he was once part of the Satanic cult that engineered Damien's adoption, as he says he "participated" as well as witnessed Damien's birth and says that he wants to save Thorn so God will forgive him and "save me from eternal damnation." And that's another thing Postlethwaite's portrayal brings to the table: while you could debate whether or not Troughton's Brennan was trying to save Thorn because he also deeply regretted having a hand in saddling this unsuspecting couple with the son of Satan, here it seems like he's mostly just trying to save himself, judging from that statement, although he does later say that all will be lost if Thorn doesn't seek out Bugenhagen. Later on, you also get a sense of just how awful Brennan's personal life was in that he wasn't really living at all. Besides being paranoid and riddled with cancer like before, rather than a crappy apartment like the original, here his home was a basement! Oh, yeah, and here, he's able to tell Thorn that Damien's real mother was jackal before the guards come to take him away, not that it makes much difference since Thorn goes on believing that none of it's real even after he finds the jackal carcass in the grave, which collaborates Brennan's claims.

Supposedly, the reason why they cast Mia Farrow as Mrs. Baylock here is because, by happy coincidence, she and Julia Stiles had been in a play together and that was enough persuasion for her but I can't help but be cynical and feel that her connection to Satanic cinema with Rosemary's Baby also had something to do with it. Regardless, like Pete Postlethwaite, Farrow is able to bring her own energy to the role and, most significantly, is able to come across as quite a different character rather than just stand in for Billie Whitelaw. She initially feels like a reassuring, comforting motherly figure, as opposed to Whitelaw's rather imposing presence, and if the original movie didn't exist, you could be lulled into thinking that she's not evil at all with how sweet she is when she first arrives and how she very kindly tells Damien when he's not so sure about her, "I'm here to protect you." That's another thing: while you knew from her first scene that Whitelaw's Baylock was evil, Farrow's portrayal is slowly but surely shown to have a sinister side. In this version, Baylock tries to make an excuse for Damien not going to church, saying that he's ill and didn't sleep much the night before, whereas in the original, she felt like she was already trying to usurp Mrs. Thorn's authority, saying that Damien was too young for church and the like. It's only in the scene where Robert Thorn runs into the Rottweiler that Baylock brought into the house without his permission that you see there's something not right about her, which is strengthened by how she plots what's going to happen to Kate ahead of time. She also becomes much more of a mother figure for Damien than Kate, as she's the only one he'll respond to and interact with. The creepiest scene involving her is when she kills Kate by causing her to suffocate from air embolism, all the while clamping her hand over her mouth while she screams helplessly and reassuring her, "It's alright," and, "Almost there." She even kisses her on the cheek after she's expired, which does kind of make you go, "Ugh." Although, when you think about it, her method of killing her here does draw suspicion on her since that nurse knows she was the last one to see Kate alive, while in the original, it feels Baylock snuck in and threw Kathy out the window in order to make it look as if she committed suicide. Unfortunately, despite how good her acting is throughout the majority of the film, Farrow's not being as imposing a presence as Whitelaw makes it hard for me to take her seriously when she attacks Thorn during the climax since she looks so small and weak, and her death in this version is laughable, while Whitelaw's was brutal and much more impactful.

If you're a fan of Italian horror films, then you likely know of Giovanni Lombardo Radice, who's known for dying gruesome deaths in various films like Cannibal Ferox, Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead, and Ruggero Deodato's The House on the Edge of the Park, among others. Here, he plays Father Spiletto (at first, I thought he was Christoph Waltz), the priest who arranges for Robert Thorn to adopt Damien. Other than a lie about Kate's womb being damaged during the birth, which he says has rendered her unable to become pregnant again (which is why Thorn is incredulous when Father Brennan claims that she is; although, like the original, it doesn't explain how he knows that), Radice is one actor in this film who really has nothing to do other than speak the same lines that Martin Benson did before. In fact, he has even less to play with since there's no mention of Spiletto going through a penance for abandoning Jesus Christ and he doesn't come across as possibly regretful for what he did like Benson seemed to be. The makeup that they put on him for the film's second half when he's severely burned is much more gruesome than Benson's and covers his entire head rather than only half of his face and while it looks good, it's a prime example of what I feel is a big problem with this film: do everything the original did, only make it more extreme in some way. The characterization of Bugenhagen (Michael Gambon) here is interesting in that, while he speaks almost the same dialogue that Leo McKern did in the original, he's much more forceful and impatient towards Thorn about what he must do, to the point that he's almost ranting at him about it. Interestingly, even though Gambon is Irish-British, when you first see him he speaks in such a way that I thought he was American, which made me think, "Well, that's an interesting way to go!" And finally, one of the tabloid reporters who Thorn has to deal with after the suicide of Damien's original nanny (the one who suggests that she was on drugs) is played by a very special actor, the original Damien himself, Harvey Stephens.

Speaking of Damien (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), lets get to him now. As in the original, he isn't really a character so much as he is a presence that everything else revolves around. In fact, he says even less than Harvey Stephens did, if you can believe that, although his lines have much more meaning, like when he asks Kate if he scared her when he hid from her while they were playing in the park and when he notes that the monkeys in the zoo are afraid. When he does speak, it becomes apparent why they didn't give him that much dialogue because, being so young, his voice is very high-pitched and his delivery isn't the best, and that they cast him simply for the way he looks, which is effective. I remember when I saw TV spots and a teaser trailer for the movie back then and when I saw Damien, I thought, "Man, that kid's creepy." However, that also works against the film because the thing about Damien in the original was that, even though he was rather creepy at points, he also had a certain innocence to him and there were moments where he behaved like a normal. Here, the "666" might as well be on his forehead because of how he looks and how distant and cold he behaves, a trait that begins to assert itself most noticeably after the death of his first nanny, so you could believe that Mrs. Baylock's influence had something to do with it. That leads me into another aspect of this version's Damien: he seems to know who he is, something that was more ambiguous in the original. Again, this could be due to Baylock, who may have told him and made him understand what his purpose is, which would explain why he acts so strangely towards his "parents," especially Kate.  Come to think of it, the only time he shows any real emotion after the death of his first nanny (aside from the obvious fear he exhibited when Robert Thorn took him to the church to kill him) is when he looks at Kate as she hangs over the edge of the railing after he knocks her over it. While he does nothing to help her, he seems like he's on the verge of tears as he watches her lose her grip, as if he doesn't want her to die but knows that this has to happen. The part that really makes me think that he knows who he is and what he can do is when he appears to momentarily take over the mind of the guard to Kate's hospital room where Baylock kills her inside, something that he never did in the original series until Damien: Omen II. But, at the same time, as it is initially in that film, it's possible that Damien doesn't understand the power he has but knows that it's there and just uses it (although, the moment he decided to use it is quite questionable). Ultimately, while some aspects of him in this version are interesting, I don't find myself that absorbed in Damien as I did in the original, which also goes for the entire movie.

As I continue to write about this film, I'm still dumbfounded about how much it is a pointless copy of the original. With all remakes, you should expect some things to be similar, but not only is it amazing how much of it remains the same in this instance but also how they inanely try to tweak the story here and there to keep it from being 100%. While these tweaks are certainly more significant than what differences Gus Van Sant put into the Psycho remake (the mere fact that you don't see someone jerking their chain here puts it above that movie for me), they're still ultimately pointless for the most part and make you wish that they had simply tried to make an original film altogether. There are several major additions to the film, such as the events that lead to Robert Thorn becoming Ambassador, Kate's different death scene, the bizarre dreams that she and, eventually, her husband have about Damien, and, most significantly and best of all, in my opinion, a different opening where a priest at the Vatican observatory sees the comet that signifies the birth of the Antichrist (which you only heard about in the original) and informs the Cardinal, leading to a meeting among the officials there where it is revealed that past events, such as 9/11 and the Columbia disaster, correspond with prophecies in the Book of Revelations and that Armageddon is at hand. While I could have done without the actual footage of those and other real-life disasters, there is a feeling of dread and doom about the scene, as the priests try to come to terms with the knowledge that the son of Satan has just been born. Too bad the film doesn't live up to its promise and those characters are pointless since they're never seen again until briefly at the end. Other than those significant examples, the tweaks to the story are so meaningless that you wonder why they even bothered. Just to name a few, you have Father Spiletto lying to Thorn about damage to Kate's womb from the birth, the dog that inspires the nanny to hang herself being something along the lines of a darkly-colored German Shepherd rather than a Rottweiler (although that's still what Mrs. Baylock brings into the house and what attacks Thorn and Keith Jennings in the cemetery), Father Brennan managing to tell Thorn that Damien's real mother was a jackal, the zoo scene being an indoor one and the animal that reacts violently to Damien's presence being a gorilla trying to break out (still a type of primate, though, and a fake-looking in some shots, at that), Damien riding a scooter instead of a tricycle when he knocks Kate over, the different place where Father Brennan called home, and the variation on Jennings' death, which is still a beheading of some sort.

What I find more disconcerting about the remake's production is that it feels like it was nothing more than an attempt to create a clever marketing strategy that would bring people in. The "666" was not only all over the posters and other advertisements but also corresponded to the film's very release, which was on June 6th, 2006 (which was on a Tuesday, no less). 20th Century Fox must have seen that the year 2006 was coming up and, remembering that they had The Omen, decided to slap this remake together and get it out on that date, which is probably why they didn't change much because that would have taken longer and they could have missed it. Hell, they even had theaters begin playing it at 6:06 in the morning, and Fox even claimed that the film's initial gross was exactly $12,633,666, which they later admitted was a joke. Ha, ha, ha! Funny! But, unfortunately, this shallow marketing strategy worked, as the movie was not only quite a hit worldwide but also broke the record for the highest Tuesday opening gross (I didn't know there was such a record, seeing as how movies are almost never released on Tuesday and, in that case, I'm guessing it wasn't a hard one to break). And yes, I know that Harvey Bernhard and the studio came up with an elaborate ad campaign for the original's release in 1976, with the novelization that was published before the film and the marketing that said, "Good morning. You are one day closer to the end of the world. You have been warned," but the difference is that before they got down to that part of it, they tried to make a good movie, one that would deserve the attention the campaign would generate, whereas this was created specifically for the campaign.

One of the great things about the original film was that it was a tale of supernatural evil taking place in the real world. Richard Donner and company took a script that was originally full of over-the-top imagery and eliminated all that to make the story feel much more realistic, to the point where it would be possible to believe that all of the horrific things that happened were a bunch of coincidences adding up. The only scene in that film that felt over the top was the severely creepy Cerveteri cemetery, which was actually effective because it was such a contrast to everything else around it. This film, however, doesn't feel like it's taking place in the real world at all and feels more like a typical, modern day horror movie. For one, it's shot in that muted color palette that a lot of films, especially in the horror genre, tend to have nowadays and, as I've said before, I'm not a fan of that look at all. For another, the environments are often designed and lit in an overly-stylized manner that confirms that what you're seeing is anything but reality and, as such, the horror that takes place isn't as effective because you're expecting to see it in such a setting. The section in Italy during the latter half of the movie is especially egregious in this regard, with the white-blue lighting and the snowy environments such as the monastery in Subiaco and the cemetery making it feel like you're watching a Tim Burton movie, and when Robert Thorn drags Damien into the church at the end, the lighting suddenly turns lime-green, which made me wonder if David Fincher suddenly hijacked the movie (if he did, it would have been a lot better). Even the Thorn household, which was a typical-looking mansion in the original, feels overly Gothic in its architecture, looking like a church itself on the outside, and the inside has a cold, clinical feel to it, with the kitchen being almost completely white. Really, the only scenes that have a feeling of reality are some moments at the beginning and they're dispensed with very quickly. And finally, as if the muted color palette wasn't enough, John Moore employs that irritating choppy, kinetic editing style and handheld filming technique during some of the more frenetic sequences, like the attack in the cemetery and the climax, making it hard to tell what's going on at points (which I've heard he does even more so in A Good Day to Die Hard).

When I began this series of reviews and was looking for images from the original Omen, I inevitably stumbled across images from this film before I'd even seen it and one of them was the shot of this figure with a monstrous face, wearing a red robe standing behind Kate. I was baffled when I saw that image, wondering what kind of movie this remake was. When I finally saw the film, it turned out to be a shot from several weird as hell dreams that Kate and Robert Thorn have about Damien throughout the film. I'm guessing they're meant to be disturbing and horrifying but, honestly, they're just weird, pointless, and make John Moore seem like a less-talented version of David Lynch. The first one occurs after Damien freaks out when his parents try to take him to church. Kate heads up for bed that night after her husband treats the injuries Damien inflicted on her when he went berserk and in the next shot, she seems to be sitting in a bathtub. Then, she lifts her right arm up to see blood streaming out of a slit wrist and, shocked by this, looks straight ahead to see Damien standing there wearing some bizarre mask that looks as if it's made of wood and has nails in the ends of its head-strap (I look at it... and I have no clue what it means). After that, there's a quick shot of Damien laughing evilly while holding a hangman's noose, with a sudden, loud noise as Kate's eyes shoot open when she wakes up. The second dream occurs after Father Brennan tells Thorn to meet him in the park the next day (at an opera this time, rather than a rugby match) and you're immediately tipped off that something's not right when you see Kate brushing her teeth in front of a mirror in a completely white room that has nothing in it but a weirdly-shaped bathtub. You see Damien appear in the doorway behind her on his scooter but when she looks, there's nothing there. That's when she turns back around and closes the mirror in front of her, revealing that weird figure behind her (I think it's face is meant to be the skull of a jackal but I'm not sure). And the third and final dream is one that Thorn has in Rome after learning of Kate's death. This is just a series of surreal images like Damien smiling while standing next to an IV filled with blood, a quick shot of Kate lying dead against a wall, and that robed figure, with the most prominent one being a shot of an evil-looking priest dropping a bloody fetus (meant to represent Father Spiletto killing his real son, I assume) and the last one before Thorn wakes up being Brennan warning him to drink the blood of Christ.

Like so much else in this movie, the death scenes and other major sequence play out virtually the same way as the original, with a few tweaks here and there. However, that said, the first death scene is one that is completely unique to this version: that of Robert Thorn's predecessor in the Ambassador position, Steven Haines (Marshall Cupp). He's being chauffeured through the streets of Rome when he gets caught up in a massive traffic jam. As they wait for it to clear, someone dragging a manhole up ahead knocks loose a big piece of concrete that was acting as a makeshift parking brake for a gas truck and the vehicle begins slowly rolling backwards. At the same time, somebody tosses a lit cigarette onto the road and as Ambassador Haines glances at his watch, the truck slams into the blockade of cars, its tank getting sliced open by the plow of a backhoe parked right in front of them. Gasoline spills out of the tank and rushes in through Haines' open window, soaking him in it. He tries to escape but can't open the door because it's jammed against the backhoe and eventually, the gas reaches the lit cigarette, sparking a fire that blows up the gas tank and Haines' limo with it.

After that explosive first death, all of the others follow the original far too much for their own good. The death of Damien's original nanny (Amy Huck) is the same as it was before: she sees the black dog, climbs on the roof of the Thorn mansion, and jumps off, hanging herself by a rope. The only difference is that her body doesn't smash through a window and, throughout the scene, there's music playing, whereas the original did it without it and was much more effective. The same goes for Father Brennan's death: after meeting with Thorn and being rebuffed by him, he heads to the church, sensing an evil presence, as a thunderstorm whips up around him, and after climbing a fence to enter the yard, avoiding being struck by lightning, he finds himself unable to enter the church and is impaled a spear that falls off the church's roof. One difference is that it's telegraphed far in advance, with it already raining and thundering when he meets with Thorn, the sight of a mysterious, red-hooded figure running in the background, and weird, screeching noises on the soundtrack, and another is that, when Brennan reaches the church, you see the door suddenly latch itself from the inside, trapping him out in the storm. And when the spear is struck off the top of the church, it crashes through a sectioned painted glass before impaling Brennan (who, here, saw it at almost the last minute, not giving him ample time to get away), a piece that involved a lot of hokey-looking CGI. As for the fall that Kate takes, it's also very similar, with Damien knocking her over the railing, her grabbing onto it but eventually slipping and falling to the floor, causing her to miscarry the baby she's pregnant with. The differences here are Damien riding a scooter instead of a tricycle, Kate grabbing ahold of a hanging flower pot before falling and grabbing the railing, said pot falling and smashing rather than a fishbowl, Kate asking Damien to help her, and the fall being much higher. One thing I'll give Julia Stiles over Lee Remick is that she actually did a stunt here, whereas Remick refused and forced Richard Donner and company to use camera tricks to achieve the scene (effective ones, mind you, though, and more convincing than some of the green screen work here). As I've said, Kate's actual death is completely different and makes for the movie's most troubling scene, especially since Damien himself is involved in it. And Keith Jennings' death is still a beheading, with only the circumstances being different. As he picks up the daggers that Thorn tossed away onto a small flight of steps, the camera pans up to show some people working on the roof of the building next to the stairs, one of whom accidentally pushes a small mallet with his foot, sending it sliding down. It hits the top of a sign right above Jennings and knocks it loose, causing it swing around and slice his head off (something else that Thorn just barely reacts to, I might add).

The interesting thing about the climax is that it's like an abbreviated, faster version of the original, as if the filmmakers wanted to just get this thing over with (like me both times that I watched it). In fact, that's also how the zoo and cemetery attack scenes are treated: like John Moore decided to forget about suspense and make them very kinetic in order to get through them as quickly as possible (to be honest, I completely forget about the cemetery scene in this film until just now, which shows you how memorable this movie is to me). For instance, the bit of business with the Rottweiler, instead of a slow-paced, stalking sequence, is a short chase. The wind from the storm outside slams the door shut, awakening the dog and prompting him to come charging down the stairs. Thorn runs into the nearby pantry and to the end of the room, where the dog seemingly corners him. As he charges at him, Thorn opens a trapdoor that leads to the cellar, causing the dog to slam into it and tumble down below, with Thorn locking him in. The same goes for the other half of the sequence after Thorn learns that Damien is indeed the Antichrist. His struggle with Mrs. Baylock isn't nearly as long or ferocious and the way he kills her, albeit different from the original is ridiculous. When he tries to drive away with Damien, she comes out and attacks the car with a polo mallet, smashing the windshield. He then swerves around, smashing into a lamp-post, and heads for the gate, driving right at her when she appears in front of him, slamming into her and causing her to flip over the top of the car in a really silly-looking digital effect. The ending is the same, with Thorn being shot by the police when he tries to stab Damien in a church, him and Kate receiving a military funeral back in the United States, and Damien now in the care of the President, with the only difference being a brief shot back at the Vatican where the Pope seems to die, making no difference whatsoever since he and the others were only seen at the beginning.

What better way to round out a movie this meaningless and forgettable than with an equally unmemorable music score? As I've said before, Marco Beltrami is a composer who can sometimes come up with good music but other times, it feels like his heart isn't it and he creates some very generic stuff that you wouldn't be able think of even if you tried and, as you can guess, that's the case here. I can admire him for wanting to do his own thing and not just copy what Jerry Goldsmith did (making him the only person involved with this flick who did feel that way) but it's just forgettable. Except for a couple of pieces here and there, mainly those that do hint at Goldsmith's original score, like a piano piece that reminds me of the beginning of Ave Satani and a different, much larger-feeling version of that theme that plays over the latter half of the ending credits, it's all a bunch of droning, underscored themes that try to sound menacing and ominous in a typical fashion and all run together. I can remember sort of liking the piece that played over the opening credits but I'll be damned if I try to tell you what it sounded like other than generic, modern-day scary movie music. Again, I can't think of a more perfect way to end a review on a movie that did not need to exist in the first place.

All in all, The Omen 2006 isn't a horrible movie; it's just a pointless and forgettable one. There are good points to it in that it's competently-made, the production values are high, there are some good actors in the cast, like Mia Farrow and Pete Postlethwaite, some interesting twists on scenes from the original, and a couple of nice makeup effects, but, at the same time, the characters are nothing more than copies of the original and the actors are mostly unable to do much else besides go through the same motions and lines as those who came before them, Liev Schreiber is a horribly wooden lead, the film's visual style is overdone and it loses the powerful feeling of reality that the original had, John Moore relies on that annoying style of fast-paced editing and handheld camerawork for a couple of the more kinetic scenes, there are instances of bad CGI, some of the sequences feel like abridged versions of the original ones, the music score is forgettable, to say the least, and the movie is ultimately so much a copy of the 1976 film, especially during its second half, that it makes you wonder why they wasted celluloid on it. What gets me, though, is that there were some critics who felt that this version was better than the original, chief among them Roger Ebert, who didn't like the first film. To each their own but I don't understand that at all. And I'm also surprised that there was never a sequel to this film, given how successful it was, but it seems like a prequel to it is in the works as I'm writing this. I don't know how you can make a prequel to a story that, itself, is a prequel to the Antichrist's reign of terror on the Earth but we'll see. In conclusion, like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, The Omen is a classic that I think will be remembered for a long time, whereas this soulless Xerox, like the Gus Van Sant film, seems to have already been forgotten for the most part and that's as it should be.

Movies That Suck/Franchises: The Omen. Omen IV: The Awakening (1991)

Do us all a favor and go back to sleep!

Let me tell you right now just how dedicated I am to this little pastime of mine. Before now, my experience with The Omen ended with The Final Conflict. For me, that was the end of the story and nothing else mattered. Plus, the nature of this movie (a rehash of the first film only with a little girl) never interested me, especially when you put it into context with the series as a whole, and, as the years went on, everything I heard about the movie pegged it as a truly horrendous piece of shit that never should have been made. It came across to me like one of those rare "bastard child" films that certain franchises have, in that they're so abysmal that fans try to act like they never existed to begin with. In fact, when I think back, it reminds me a lot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation in that nearly every official source of information I ever read (books, websites, etc.) talked about the original trilogy and didn't acknowledge this film. The only reason why I even knew there was a fourth Omen film was because I read a listing for it in an October 1999 issue of a TV guide sort of magazine that we got for the satellite we had at the time (because of the little description that came with the listing, I got my first hint that there was more to this franchise than it just being about an evil little kid) and because of the Omen Legacy documentary. What's more, AMC must have had the same viewpoint on the franchise that I would later develop because they only ever showed the original trilogy. So, I was content to never see Omen IV, or the 2006 remake, for that matter, and leave it at The Final Conflict... and then, I began this blog and quickly realized that, in order to avoid a lot of complaining and make it more complete, I would have to seek out and watch various sequels that I never intended to see or even acknowledge, like the aforementioned Next Generation or Beware! The Blob (or Son of the Blob, if you will) or this film. Now, I had intended to simply find a place online to watch both this and the remake but, while I was successful with the latter, I couldn't find a single place that had Omen IV to watch for free and in English! So, guess what I did? I ordered the bitch. I went to Amazon, found the cheapest copy of it that I could (less than six dollars), and ordered it. That, my friends, is how dedicated I am to this. Maybe I care a little too much but I pride myself on being an, at least, decent reviewer, damn it! I got it, I watched it twice for this review, which is how I always do things, and guess what? It sucks. Lordy, lordy, lord, does it suck! The Final Conflict is anticlimactic bore and the remake, which we'll get to next, is just pointless in how it's a virtual Xerox of the original, but this is by far the worst of the series. It's an uninspired, poorly-constructed, badly-acted, stupid TV movie (although it got a theatrical release in other parts of the world) that should have never been made and I thank God did nothing in terms of ratings so we didn't get more tripe like this.

(Like The Final Conflict, this is a film where I had a surprising amount of difficulty finding really good and relevant images. There were some characters I only found mediocre images of, some none at all, and I found no images of the actual deaths whatsoever, only of the build-ups and aftermaths. So, I apologize in advance for this review not being as well as illustrated as I thought it would be. It must be the Omen curse!)

Gene and Karen York, a politically-connected, Virginia couple, adopt a baby girl from an orphanage operated by a sisterhood of nuns and name her Delia. Right from the beginning, strange things begin to happen, like the head nun dying of a heart attack after the adoption, one of the nuns leaving the orphanage shortly afterward, and a priest who attempts to baptize the baby suddenly dying of a heart attack. Some time afterward, after a congressman is severely slandered when his perverse private life is exposed, Gene runs for his position and manages to get it. Seven years later, eight-year old Delia is beginning to develop a very cruel, violent, and manipulative personality towards everyone but her parents and after a couple of altercations with a boy at her school who constantly picks on her, his father is killed in a sudden and horrific freak accident. When she's injured after a horse she tries to ride becomes frightened and bucks her off, it's revealed that she's already menstruating even though she's only eight. The Yorks hire Jo, a practitioner of New Age spirituality, as a nanny for Delia but she immediately senses that there's something strange about her when all of her healing crystals turn black around her. When her friend, Noah, an aura reader, senses a lot of negative energy coming from her, Jo takes Delia to a psychic fair, where her presence alarms the psychics and when an aura photograph of her is taken, the picture reveals dark, sepia tone colors around her. A mysterious fire destroys the fair and kills some of the psychics but, despite warnings from Noah to leave, Jo stays behind in order to try to help Delia deal with her negative energy, only to be shoved through the window by Delia's dog, Ryder. Karen discovers that she's become pregnant and, as her fear towards Delia's menacing behavior deepens, she turns to a local preacher in trying to make sense of what Jo discovered about Delia, which is where she learns of the Antichrist. She eventually hires private detective Earl Knight to track down Delia's biological parents as well as Sister Yvonne, the nun who left the orphanage after Delia's adoption. What Knight uncovers, before he's killed in another freak accident, ties Delia to Damien Thorn, who Karen learns was not only the Antichrist but also Delia's father. Even more horrific, Karen's recently born son, Alexander, whose embryo Delia was carrying inside her body before it was implanted into Karen, is also Damien's seed and destined to become the new Antichrist. Now, Karen must kill her own baby boy in order to prevent the prophecy of the Book of Revelations from coming to pass.

Before we go further into this, let's address the biggest sticking point as to why this movie shouldn't even exist: The Final Conflict ended with the Second Coming of Christ. Jesus came back, Damien died, and the entire world was cleansed of all the evil that he'd caused as the Messiah began his eternal, peaceful reign. So, how could this story possibly be taking place? Why are we suddenly thrown back into a world where everything's going downhill and the red carpet for the Antichrist is basically being rolled out, as the character of Father Mattson puts it? Plus, said character talks about how he feels that the Antichrist will come and cause great suffering in the world and the whole time, I'm sitting there, thinking to myself, "He already did and was defeated!" They do, at least, acknowledge Damien's death but seem to retcon the Second Coming, instead saying that his followers have been waiting for the opportunity to continue his legacy, which they now have with his children. So, when you also take Mattson's warning into account, does it all mean that, in this alternate reality (which is what I feel it is), Damien was merely a precursor and father to the real Antichrist, who is actually baby Alexander? Wow, way to rob the previous films of their impact, especially the original, as if I already didn't have enough reasons to hate this movie. But, of course, the real reason why this film exists, despite what came before, is because the people behind the Fox Television Network saw The Omen as one of many properties that the studio had that they could make part of a series of low budget, movies of the week that they were doing at that time and didn't care what they had to do in order to make it work.

Like Damien: Omen II, Omen IV was ultimately shot by two directors by the time it was completed. The first director, who shot most of the film, was Dominique Othenin-Girard, a French/Swiss filmmaker who's notorious among horror fans for directing Halloween 5, one of the least popular entries in that franchise (and if you've seen my review on it, you'd know that it's not a film I'm very fond of, either), as well as for coming across as completely clueless and full of it in interviews and on that commentary he did for Halloween 5. Like Mike Hodges before him, Othenin-Girard's rather slow filming methods didn't jive well with producer Harvey Bernhard, who said that he was in absolute agony during filming. I'm not sure if Othenin-Girard was fired or if he just quit (IMDB says that he quit but I would really like to think he was fired since I think the guy's a complete idiot) but, whatever the case, about a week before filming wrapped, he was gone and he hasn't done much theatrical work in the years since, spending most of his time doing TV work back in Europe. His last theatrical movie over here was a 1995 movie called Beyond Desire with William Forsythe and he wouldn't direct another real movie until 2008 when he did a Swiss film called Dirty Money - Undercover. His replacement was Jorge Montesi, a Chile-born director of television, as well as actor, who, up to that point, had done stuff like episodes of 21 Jump Street, an episode of the 1980's revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and an episode of the War of the Worlds TV show. Like Don Taylor on the second film, he was brought in because they needed somebody who get the film back on schedule and budget and he was known for working quickly with very low budgets. I sincerely doubt he gave much of a crap about The Omen given the circumstances. His directing career continued throughout the 90's as he directed episodes of Forever Knight, the Highlander television series, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, NYPD Blue, The Outer Limits, and Jake 2.0, as well as numerous TV movies and even a couple of theatrical ones, like 1994's Soft Deceit and Outside the Law with Cynthia Rothrock in 2002. His last credit on IMDB is a 2007 TV movie called Cleaverville.

Since it's a TV movie, it's not surprising that Omen IV, for the most part, doesn't have the best acting but even then, there are some performances and line-reading here that are truly horrendous. Faye Grant gives a passable enough performance as Karen York but still, it could have been a lot better. Karen's character is actually kind of a mixture of both Kathy and Robert Thorn from the original in how she's not only the mother but, like Robert, she also begins to grow suspicious of her child's nature, herself wondering why Delia has never been sick a day in her life, and decides to investigate her past through the help of the private detective. Like Kathy, she starts to fear her own child, especially when she becomes pregnant again since she thinks Delia will try to harm the baby, and like Robert, learns of the Antichrist and begins to suspect that Delia may have some connection to it. A big difference between her and Kathy, though, is that, despite becoming paranoid and obsessed about the possibility of the Antichrist, she never has a mental breakdown and is able to remain rational, seeing how Delia is acts different towards other people than she does with her and her husband, who is completely blind to what's going on. Unfortunately, Grant doesn't have much important stuff to do in her role until the third act where, after receiving the information that Earl Knight uncovered about Damien Thorn before he died, she forces Dr. Hastings to confirm that Damien was the Antichrist, that Delia is his daughter, and that her newborn son, Alexander, was planted inside her as an embryo and is meant to be the new Antichrist. Much like Robert Thorn did, she decides to save the world by killing her own child but the big difference is that, while Robert died trying, Karen ends up killing herself, either due to the influence of Delia and Alexander or because she couldn't bring herself to do it and decided she'd rather be dead. Either way, I will admit that Karen's character arc during the film is kind of sad given how happy she is to have a baby at the beginning, especially since she couldn't become pregnant no matter how much she and Gene tried, and the good times you see her spending with little Delia during the montage of her early childhood, as well as the concern and love she showed for Alexander, but it still doesn't affect me nearly as much as what happened to Robert and Kathy in the original.

Gene calling Jake out... with a dopey look on his face.

While I can give Faye Grant a little bit of leeway in her performance, I can't do the same for Michael Woods as her husband, Gene. His performance is absolutely wooden and lacking in any personality and his character is Robert Thorn if he was an oblivious moron. Like Robert, he starts in a fairly important political position and, after adopting the child, finds himself elected to a much higher one (in this case, it's Congressman), but unlike Robert, Delia's behavior and the bizarre occurrences and deaths happening around her never strike him as particularly odd. He believes everything that Delia says and never considers that she might not be telling the truth, always coming up with some excuse as to why that's not the case. Actually, I began to wonder if he was acting like this because he was a Satanist himself, as Karen momentarily suspects, but it turns out that's not the case and he's just an ignorant pawn in the Satanists' plot to help Alexander rise to power (although, he does suggest out of nowhere that they go to Rome, which is where the Antichrist is prophesized to rise from). The only moment I can think of where Gene showed any conviction is when he confronted his friend and colleague Jake Maddison (Don S. Davis) about his plan to pave over wooded areas for urban infrastructure, saying that having a friend like him on Capital Hill has gone to his head and he's become what they used to hate, and even then, Woods' acting is so bland that it's nothing less than cringe-inducing. Surprisingly, though, Woods still gets TV work to this day, so what do I know?

Since she's eight years old rather than five, Delia (Asia Vieira) has much more to say and is more of a character than Damien in the original film. She may act all sweet and innocent towards her parents but to everyone else, she's a violent and cruel child who is instantly hostile towards anyone she doesn't like and makes anybody who messes with her in any way, shape, or form pay. She beats on this kid who picks on her with her lunchbox and follows that up by making it look like it was all him to most of the adults by allowing him to punch her, leaving a bleeding lip, and tricking him onto a high ladder, causing him to wet his pants in fear. She's also not at all fond of her family new nanny, Jo, becoming especially nasty towards her new-age type of spirituality that involves healing crystals and the like. That leads into something else about Delia: from the beginning, she knows who she is and where she comes from, which explains her aversion to anything that has to do purity and religion. Even as a baby, she looked evil in some shots, and later on when she's an eight-year old, she uses her power to kill those who she feels threaten her in some way, like the father of the boy she beat on, the psychics at the fair, and Jo, whom she unleashes her Rottweiler, Ryder, on. Exactly how much she knows about the conspiracy of Satanists around her, like Dr. Hastings and Lisa Roselli, the nanny who replaces Jo, and whether she's actually jealous of baby Alexander is speculative (although the latter mentions having had a "talk" with Delia) but, regardless, by the end of the film, she knows who her brother is and is acting as his protector, telling Karen to, "See him. Really see him." She's obviously going to continue acting as his protector during his rise to power as well. If nothing else, Delia is at least more than just a gender-switched version of Damien from the original but I still find the mystery surrounding him to be much more interesting than anything that has to do with her.

The one glimmer in this wretched cesspool of a movie is Michael Lerner as Earl Knight, the private detective who Karen hires to find Delia's real parents and is the one who enabled Gene to become Congressman when he exposed his predecessor as a sleazeball. Lerner absolutely rocks in this role, demonstrating an ability to make even the lowest form of scripting and characterization work reasonably well. He has a great charisma to him, coming across as somebody who loves taking down people who deserve it, and is also quite witty in his detecting methods, like when he's trying to get some information out of a bartender and when the guy refuses to say anything since he's an ex-cop rather than a real one, he slips him a $20 bill and asks, "What does twenty bucks get me, Vanna?" The bartender responds, "A vowel. Maybe a consonant," and Earl goes, "Ooh, tough guy." It's a great little moment for him, as is the moment where he shows Karen the names of the people who hired him to take down Gene's predecessor and when she sees Jake Maddison's name among them, he notices her reaction and asks, "Smell a rat?" He also comes across as a compassionate guy too, taking pity on Karen when she becomes distraught over the things that have happened to her family over the years since they adopted Delia and helping her to her car when she has something akin to an early contraction in his office. Above everything else, Earl proves to be a really good and resourceful PI, hiring some clowns to create a distraction at the orphanage while he searches through their records on Delia (which turn out to be bogus in regards to her parents) and manages to get enough information from that bartender to track Sister Yvonne down to North Carolina, where she's established a new identity (I like his line, "Figured I'd go down and share a vision with her,"). Granted, he does do something shitty in showing her a picture of Delia that frightens and distracts her to where she gets bitten by a bunch of rattlesnakes, leading to her death, but he's still a great character and I wish he were the lead of this movie rather than really getting involved in the story at almost an hour in. I would have loved to have known more about him, like why he quit his previous job as a cop and why he's so quick to emphasize that he is an ex-cop, but no, he's just a character who comes in to brighten up the movie a little bit before he gets killed for his meddling.

One character who really can't take the hint that Delia is an evil child until it's too late is Jo Thueson (Ann Hearn), the nanny that the Yorks hire. Despite everything that happens after she meets Delia, like her healing crystals turning black from her presence, the negativity both she and her friend, Noah (Jim Byrnes), sense from her, the ominous aura surrounding her in the picture Noah takes of the two of them (not to mention that it's undulating towards her head!), the deadly fire that breaks out at the psychic fair afterward, and Delia's overall dislike of her and her beliefs, Jo refuses to leave even when Noah warns her to, stupidly saying, "She's just a little girl," and that she wants to help her. Well, she learns too late just how dangerous this "little girl" she's trying to help is when she tries to meditate with her and senses more evil within her before she ends up getting spit on and attacked by Ryder, who kills her when she tries to warn Karen of what she's discovered. Noah is definitely the smarter one of the two in that he knows from the start just how dark and negative Delia is from what he senses, almost becoming sick by merely being in her presence, and when he sees the dark aura surrounding her in the picture of her and Jo, which precedes the sudden fire that destroys the fair, he tries to warn Jo to get away from Delia. According to Earl Knight, after Jo's death, Noah simply disappeared and is never heard from again, making it unclear as to whether he simply put enough space between himself and Delia as he could or if he was killed offscreen for what he discovered.

At first, I thought Sister Yvonne (Megan Leitch) and the other nuns, especially the Mother Superior (Susan Chapple), were Satanists in disguise who goad an unsuspecting couple into adopting a demonic child, like Father Spiletto did to Robert Thorn, but upon my second viewing, I found that the case is actually that they couldn't bring themselves to kill a child, even an evil one like Delia. In any case, Sister Yvonne is not at all happy with what pushed onto the Yorks and while the Mother Superior is at first comforting towards her, she later physically punishes her for her continuing breakdown about it, especially when she says that Delia should have never been born. When the Mother Superior suddenly dies of a heart attack while slapping her, and after she experiences some menacing paranormal activity herself, Yvonne quits the sisterhood and, after a couple of failed attempts to warn the Yorks of the truth (making her this film's equivalent to Father Brennan), she disappears completely. Through Earl's investigation, you learn that she became a prostitute for a time before finding some new type of faith, becoming a strange prophet under the name of Felicity after relocating to North Carolina, where she demonstrates the power of her faith by stepping into a container filled with rattlesnakes and picking them up. Like I said earlier, Earl ends up getting her killed when he shows her a picture of her holding baby Delia with Karen and, in her fear, becomes distracted and gets bitten many times by the snakes. Before she dies, Felicity warns Earl of Delia's nature and at her trailer, he finds information that she's gathered about Gene over the years and, most significantly, information about Damien Thorn.

This is hardly the best image of Hastings but it was the only

one I could find that wasn't of his death scene.

Like the other films, you have members of a Satanic cult who work in different positions, arranging the coming of the new Antichrist, an opportunity they've been waiting for ever since Damien's death. Chief among them is Dr. Hastings (Madison Mason), the York family doctor, who sees to it that Karen becomes the mother of the Antichrist by extracting his embryo from Delia's body when she comes in after her attempt at horseback riding goes awry and implants it inside of Karen when she's brought after she faints when Jo falls to her death right in front of her. Karen makes him spill the beans using the very painful method of stabbing his hand to his desk with a scalpel (a surprisingly bloody effect for an early 90's TV movie) and once he's told her everything, saying that Alexander is going to create a new world, he attempts to keep her silent by taking a gun out of his desk drawer but she stabs him to death before he can shoot. Like I mentioned earlier, Gene's friend Jake Madison is also involved since he was a member of the committee that arranged for one of the Congressmen to be publicly humiliated in a scandal so Gene could take his place and after it happened, he really pushed for him to run for it. It seems like he's doing this simply out of a want for wealth and power, which Gene calls him out on when he discovers his urban infrastructure project. You even have a brief Mrs. Baylock equivalent in the form of Lisa Roselli (Andrea Mann), the nanny who replaces Jo after her death, although she's killed quite easily by Karen before she can pose any threat. Really, the only person who shares what Karen slowly begins to believe is Father Mattson (Duncan Fraser), the priest who she goes to in order to make sense of the connections between certain aspects of Jo's beliefs and the Bible, which is where the Antichrist is brought up. Mattson tells her all about the Antichrist, what he'll do, how he'll deceive people, and makes a comment about how most of humanity is unwittingly in league with Satan due to the current state of the world, saying, "Our hell is his paradise." One line he says that I do like is when Karen asks him if the Antichrist can be stopped and he says, "If there wasn't, I'd pack it in right now." He's also the one who suggests that the Antichrist could possibly be a female, although that turns out to not be the case.

One of the aspects of Omen IV that strikes me is just how bland and generic the film looks. I don't know what it is about Canada but whenever a movie is filmed up there, as this was, 99% of the time it ends up having a very cheap, uninspired look and that's certainly the case here, to the point where it's also the weakest film in the series from a stylistic point. I don't care much for the overdone visuals of the 2006 remake but at least that is memorable in a way; this is just, "bleh," and Lifetime TV-ish (I know that's to be expected, given that it is a TV movie, but that's not something you want in an Omen movie. The only scene in the film that I find kind of visually appealing is the one that takes place in the snow in broad daylight and even that borders a bit on cheap; everything else can only be described as drab and unremarkable, even in a scene in a church where you see a bunch of multicolored candles. As for atmosphere, forget about it. There is none to be found here, especially when you add in the film's highly inappropriate original music score. Let's put it this way: Damien: Omen II had more of an ominous feeling to it than this thing ever does! What's more, the film is sometimes edited in a very clichéd and chaotically abrupt way. For instance, the scene where Earl Knight is shown taking photographs of the original Congressman with a prostitute comes straight out of nowhere and ends just as abruptly, with the film cutting right to another scene when he hits the ground after falling off the ladder he was standing on. It's so fast that the first time I saw it, my brain almost got whiplash! There are other instances like that in the film but that's the one that stood out to me the most. The first major death scene is also filmed with a slow-motion method that makes it look very cheap and cheesy, like what you'd expect from a TV movie made around this time. And while the moments leading up to Earl's death are done in an interesting manner, the death itself and the telegraphing of it that occurs throughout the scene are cringe-inducing and give the impression that both the filmmakers and the editor didn't know what they were doing or how to build suspense. But for me, the biggest failure of the editing is the fact that often, I realize that a lot of time has meant to have passed between cuts but I had clue that was the case until I heard someone mention it. For instance, Karen is first informed that she's pregnant, then in the next couple of scenes, she's four months along and then, in like the next cut, she's six months along. It's so clumsily done that, by the time she goes into labor, I didn't realize that much time had passed since she first hired Earl to find Delia's real parents, or that Gene was now trying to get re-elected. It also doesn't help that a lot of the movie takes place in early-to-mid winter, making it even harder to realize how long you're in one year of the movie's timeline. In fact, this poorly-executed passage of time reminds me a lot of The Crater Lake Monster, that horrible 1977 flick where, a good ways into the film, you're suddenly told that it's been six months since the story began, although there had been nothing in the editing (dissolves, fades to black, etc.) that would have let you know that was the case. Thank God this movie at least had a little bit of montage showing Delia's early childhood or I would have really been thrown when she went from a baby to a toddler in a cut! (And before anyone says anything, I'm aware that there is a cut like that in the original Omen but otherwise, that film was edited far better and more sensibly than this.)

This is the first Omen movie to deal with other types of spirituality besides Christianity, one of which is part of Native American culture: the idea of healing crystals, which Jo Thueson brings into the York household and unintentionally repels Delia with, later seeing that all of her crystals have turned black from either being touched by or simply being in the girl's presence. There's also the notion of auras, which Jo's friend, Noah, is able to both sense and take photographs of, which result in more evidence that there is a lot of negativity surrounding Delia, and there are even psychics, who all become uneasy and full of dread when Delia is nearby and are themselves quite frightened when they see her disturbing aura photograph. Jo, being a New Age practitioner, tries to use meditation to get to the bottom of Delia's condition and ends up learning just how evil she is before she's killed, although she did manage to point Karen towards the book she practices from, which eventually leads her to the Bible and the prophecies of the Antichrist. This stuff is kind of interesting but, even though there is a connection between it and Christianity that's eventually revealed, it takes up such a small section of the film that it ultimately proves to have been meaningless to introduce it in the first place. What's more, I'm not entirely sure why Delia is so repelled by the healing crystals and why she angrily denounces Jo's beliefs when they're not the same as Christianity, which is what she should fear. Maybe she knows that there's some kind of connection but it still comes across as rather random. And I don't know what's up with the stuff that Sister Yvonne takes part in when she becomes Felicity in North Carolina. It's clearly some strange iteration of Christianity, as she tries to prove the power of her faith with those rattlesnakes, which I'm assuming are meant to represent the devil, but whether or not it stems from anything in reality is not something I'm aware of, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were something like this out there.

Given that this is an early 90's TV movie, you shouldn't go into it expecting some really gruesome and bloody death scenes like those in the previous films. In fact, the first two deaths in the movie, the Mother Superior and the priest who attempts to baptize Delia, are nothing more than sudden heart attacks, with the latter happening after the priest senses a menacing presence in the church, as shown when the candles in the room are blown out by a gust of air after he drops dead in front of an altar of Christ. The first really major death is of the father of the boy who picked on Delia and ended up getting beaten up by her as a result. Following the scene where she tricks the boy into climbing a ladder after her, causing him to wet himself in fear, his father has an angry confrontation with Karen York outside of the school and makes it known that this isn't going to be the last she hears from him. As he leaves, he stomps over to Karen's van in an attempt to do something but backs off when he sees Delia sitting inside. She watches as he walks back to his car, gets inside, and swerves around to drive out of the parking lot, but he's not watching what he's doing and is unable to stop in time to avoid a truck that's backing up perpendicular to his car, with its sharp, tailgate open. The tailgate slashes right through the windshield, at the guy's head, and while you don't see it, you get the impression that it decapitated him. The next major scene after that is when Jo makes the mistake of taking Delia to the psychic fair to have her aura photographed. She's already causing havoc when she arrives at the fair as the psychics become alarmed by her presence but things really get bad when she becomes enraged after the photograph is taken. A gust of wind blows through the fairground, knocking over an oil lamp that catches fire to the tapestry hanging from its table and igniting the right sleeve on its would-be seller's sweater. As Jo tries to catch up with Delia, she accidentally knocks another lady into a table, causing her to push over a lit candelabra there and ignite a fire near a blind psychic who's pulled out of the way by another person. One guy watching someone who's juggling some burning objects isn't as lucky, however, as the juggler suddenly drops them at his feet and he's set ablaze, stumbling into another booth. An explosion rips through a tent, causing a massive fire that spreads throughout the fairground and causes everyone to panic as they try to escape, all while Delia looks back, smiling evilly as the fair burns to the ground while she walks away with Jo.

Speaking of Jo, she gets hers next when she tries to meditate with Delia in order to find the source of her negative energy, only for Delia to lose her patience and give her a cryptic message about her real father before spitting in her face. Shocked by what she just did, Jo stumbles out of Delia's room and into the hallway, where she comes face to face with Delia's Rottweiler, Ryder (who became her pet when he appeared out of nowhere and saved her from getting hit by a truck when she was a few years younger) and is hit in the face by some wind. When she turns around and sees that Delia is following her, she runs upstairs into her own room, closing and locking the door behind her, with Delia following her movements on the floor below. Jo tries to get Karen's attention in the yard below but, just when she happens to look up and see her, Ryder smashes through the door and leaps at Jo, sending her flying through the window and causing her to land on top of Delia's little merry-go-round, right in front of Karen, who lets out a scream before fainting out of fear and shock. Another death doesn't happen until the middle of the third act, which, except for the scenes involving Earl Knight, makes the movie all the more boring to sit through (not that the deaths elevated it that much, though). When Earl tracks down Sister Yvonne in North Carolina where she has a new life as Felicity, he sneaks into the church during the demonstration of her faith with the rattlesnakes and gets in line with a bunch of other people who are asking her to pray for them. Everything's going fine, as she reassures everyone that the snakes' venom can't hurt them, but when Earl hands her a picture of herself standing next to Karen holding baby Delia, it goes south immediately. She becomes afraid and throws away the picture, distracting her long enough for the rattlesnake that she's holding to bite her on the cheek, prompting her to throw it to her right. The other snakes in the container she's standing in then attack, with one biting at her leg and when Earl tries to help her, he gets bitten on the hand. Felicity gets bitten several more times on the leg and collapses on the stage, yelling in pain. In the next cut, she's taken to the hospital, gasping for air as the venom begins to take its toll on her. Earl receives some anti-venom for his snakebite and is told that he's going to be fine, whereas Felicity is probably not going to make it. Before Earl leaves the hospital, he goes in to see Felicity, who is now serious condition, hemorrhaging internally and around her mouth (the makeup effects are on her do make you go, "Ugh,"). She's only able to weakly whisper something about "the Beast" to Earl before he leaves, after which a window opens by itself and projects a shadow that resembles an inverted cross on the wall above her bed. She then coughs a little bit and tries to yell something before finally expiring.

Earl's own death comes next. Stuck in North Carolina and unable to get back to Virginia because of the weather, he mails his findings to the Yorks and then just mills around the town for a little bit, smiling at a nearby choir singing Christmas hymns and looking through a toy store's window, where he sees an automated, toy construction crane (foreshadowing of what's to come). He walks down to another shop and looks through its window a little manger display, only for the figures, including the baby Jesus, to turn discolored and demonic as he looks at them. Freaked out by this, he backs into a woman behind him and then stumbles down the sidewalk as it begins to rain, only to run into a demonic version of the choir, who happen to singing the Ave Satani song (the version originally heard in the sequence leading up to Father Brennan's death in the first film). Horrified by this, and clutching his chest, Earl falls to the ground before getting back to his feet and running off, as we're shown what's about to happen as a nearby construction crane begins operating by itself, hoisting a wrecking ball up into the air. After running for a little while longer, Earl eventually crosses a street and stops in front of the construction office, appearing relieved as he thinks he's escaped from the danger he felt he was in. It doesn't last long, though, as the wrecking ball smashes straight through the office and heads right towards him, with him only able to watch in shock before it slams into him and impales him with the hook on its bottom. The shot of the ball going through the construction office and the effect of it reflected in his eye before it hits him look pretty good but the actual effect of him getting rammed by it is clearly a dummy.

I don't know if I'd say the climax here is worse than The Final Conflict or not because that was an anticlimactic letdown when it should have been glorious, whereas there are no such expectations with this, but, regardless, it begins when Karen confronts Dr. Hastings. After stabbing his hand to the desk with a scalpel, she forces him to tell her all about Damien Thorn, Delia, and how Alexander is meant to be the Antichrist who'll usher in a new world. He pulls a pistol out of his drawer and swings around to try to shoot her but she stabs him in the chest with the scalpel before he can. Taking his gun with her, Karen heads back home, where she's confronted by Delia's new nanny, Lisa Roselli, and kills her very easily when Roselli, even though Karen's pointing the gun right at her, charges at her and tries to struggle with her. After shooting her and sending her tumbling down the stairs, Karen goes into Alexander's room to find Delia there, holding her baby brother. Karen says she wants to see her son and Delia tells her, "See him. Really see him." That's when Karen sees the "666" on Alexander's right palm (not only is it a crappy-looking effect but that's going to be a lot harder to hide than Damien's birthmark under his hair) and attempts to shoot both him and Delia but, either through the children's power or because she can't bring herself to do it, she turns the gun on herself and commits suicide offscreen. The movie ends with Karen's funeral, with the last shot being Gene walking with Delia and Alexander, down a path in the cemetery that looks like an inverted cross (subtle).

The film shamelessly borrows some of the themes that Jerry Goldsmith composed for both The Omen and The Final Conflict and when you hear the original music, composed by Jonathan Sheffer, you understand why because it seems like either that guy knew this was a bad film and didn't even try or is a talentless hack. The latter actually could be true because he mainly works as a conductor and hasn't worked on many projects as an actual composer. Most of the stuff he has composed music for consists of more television work, short films, and documentaries, with his theatrical films being little known flicks like On Valentine's Day, In a Shallow Grave (with Michael Biehn), Bloodhounds of Broadway (which has an acting role by Madonna), Pure Luck (with Martin Short and Danny Glover), and, the title that really caught my attention, a 1988 movie called Zits. Judging from the plot synopsis, it's not really a movie about pimples but I'm just like, "They got a guy who scored a movie called Zits to do an Omen movie?" It's not fair to judge a person's work based on the name of the movie they did music for, I know, but I wouldn't be giving him so much crap if his score for Omen IV didn't suck so bad. So, what's so bad about it, you might ask? It's goofy as hell and sounds like something you'd expect to hear in a Looney Tunes cartoon, that's what! His music involving the family moments between the Yorks and baby Delia is okay but it's like he doesn't know how to score scenes that are supposed to be ominous, suspenseful, or scary. You hear music during the opening titles that sounds far too whimsical for a movie about the devil's child, the scene where Delia tricks that kid into climbing that ladder is scored like an old Disney cartoon, and during the scene at the fair, you hear music that sounds like what Danny Elfman would do if he were on speed and had all of his talent sucked out. Even worse, when you mix in Goldsmith's masterful and genuinely menacing music, it sounds as if there are two completely different movies here battling for dominance and the sucky one is winning. For instance, the ending scene at the funeral has Goldsmith's original Ave Satani, which leads into the ending credits, and it does paint a grim picture of an uncertain future as Delia and the newborn Antichrist head off with their unsuspecting father... and then it's completely ruined once the theme ends because it goes back into Sheffer's silly music. Fortunately, they end with his family theme, which works a little better as it reminds you of the happiness Karen had with her adopted daughter and how it's all been shattered in the most tragic way possible, but the damage is already done by that point. It's truly amazing what a train-wreck this score is and it's one of the major things that kills the movie for me since, personally, music can often make or break it.

There are no two ways about it: Omen IV: The Awakening sucks and sucks hard. Other than Michael Lerner's likable performance, a little bit to do with Faye Grant, and some occasional okay effects, there is nothing to recommend the movie: it's a poorly-made, uninspired, boring, pointless movie with bad acting, uninteresting characters, zero suspense and atmosphere, death scenes that are hindered by their being in a TV movie, a bland, generic look, confusing editing that makes it hard to remember where you are in the story's timeline, and an atrociously inappropriate music score that, when combined with Jerry Goldsmith's original themes, makes you want to be watching the other movies instead all the more. I really wish that I hadn't wasted my time with this piece of junk because it was pretty miserable to do this review but, for completion's sake, I did it and I hope everyone enjoys it. And if I got some things about the story wrong, I apologize but this is one instance where I'm not that broken up about it if that's the case, because I'm never watching this damn movie ever again!