Film Summary DCLXVI (Omen III: The Final Conflict)


I got to be honest here. The whole reason I started watching this Omen trilogy was to get to this point.
I wanted to see the Sam Neill as Damien for some time now.
And knew that I had to watch the other two to get here.
It's just a shame that I misremembered the ending and I think I confused it with 'In the mouth of Madness'.

Unlike the other two movies Damian doesn't win out here. I guess once he's an adult he's fair game. Or he just doesn't have any followers anymore.
I suppose he did chase off his one official man who was with him throughout most of his Democratic career.
But then he also had an entire cult of people following him that didn't accompany him to the Christ child that he was supposed to destroy during the second coming.

Really I can't be upset by this. The whole prophecy is based off of a 1800 year old reference for the Book of Revelation.
It says right there in the writing that the Lord will win out in the long run and the second coming of Christ will banish the Antichrist along with the other two evil entities.

But still I was kind of rooting for evil here. And that might seem sinistre to some people (which it is). But Damian is the one character we've been with this entire trilogy and when he wins out the other two times its implied that something immaculately horrible is going to happen in the future.

Obviously the first Omen movie was made with no sequels in mind so when you see him standing next to the President as a small boy it's supposed to be an ominous ending that implies he' win and that the Antichrist so bring about the end of the world.
But when you decide to make more movies because your franchise turned out to be quite financially viable. So now you kind of have to change how things are going to turn out lest you end up alienating a huge group of people or just go against the story itself.
Once again I would have personally preferred that because I always find that fascinating and stories when the world ends. Much like Ragnarok in Norse mythology. But what are you going to do.
I stated before you can always watch 'In the mouth of Madness' and see everything fall apart there.

So you think by the paragraphs above that I really didn't care for the film.
And that's not true.
Yes Omen 3 is not as good as the previous two but it's a fairly enjoyable all on its own.
It doesn't just feel like a complete rehash of the previous films.
Sam Neill was fun to watch as he gets to wander around aimlessly talking to cult personalities and an incredibly weird looking crucified Jesus, of which he wants to torment.

The pacing in this movie is a lightning speed.
This thing went by like a flash, it was one of the most fast paced films I've seen in a while.
I got to the last 10 minutes and I was wondering how in God's name are they going to wrap this up?
It just didn't seem like they have enough time. And in a way that kind of didn't. I think they could have got a little bit more with the ending when Damien finally encounters Christ reborn or even just the last Monk. But arguably you can argue that if they did try to push for a more dramatic ending that it just would have fizzled out or felt kind of odd with the rest of the film.

There is an awful lot of baby murder in this movie. We're talkin Herod the Great levels here.

It kind of makes Christ out to be a bit of a jerk at the end. All those people throughout all three films children, men, women, close relatives, priests, archaeologists. All killed kind of pointlessly because God couldn't get off his keister and try and support the people who are after Damian a little bit more. I get that most of them didn't believe in the myth and they weren't even religious therefore they were kind of blind to the atrocity and where going to inevitably die. But I think God was well within his rights to stop some of the natural disasters from happening. Like the archaeologist getting buried alive under a tomb.

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