The Final Conflict (1981)

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Blistering performances.

Now come into his full knowledge and power, the Anti-Christ in the body of Damien Thorne is about to strike his final blow. The Christ-child has been born again, on the Angel Isle, Great Britain. The plan is simple, kill the Christ child to prevent him from growing up to bring the return of Christ and death of the Anti-Christ. Even with the great Sam Neil in it 'The Final Conflict' or also known as 'The Omen III' feels cheap and just made for a few bucks since it's storyline wasn't anything interesting and despite the good actors? Nothing memorable either.

"With all the power of evil, with fire and brimstone, with the intensity of hate and the foulness of Hell itself, I shall curse the world, condemning it to…a brief recession." Now this is how you make a sequel! The Final Conflict does just about everything right in building on franchise tropes and expectations and growing them to a newer, grander narrative. Damien is in full command of his power here, and it's exciting to see him at the helm rather than the omnipotent hand of Satan. Of course, he still has his minions and another Rottweiler helps him do his bidding, but seeing Damien at the head of Thorn Industries and how he worked his rise to power makes for a thrilling way to move the story forward. Neill is perfectly cast, injecting a combination of winning charm and darker torment behind his suits and smiles. Jerry Goldsmith is back once more for the score, and like with the story, he expands on his earlier work to provide a fuller, more diverse piece. Some of those angelic compositions near the end are show stopping.Omen III centres itself on an epic story where there are plenty of consequences at stake. We knew all along that Damien would rise to power, but now that he's got it, we don't know whether he'll get his ultimate goal of taking over the world. He has colleague entanglements, as he must kill the child of his assistant to rid the world of Christ, he has romantic complications with Kate, at one point disturbingly raping her in a bid to show how pain can be beautiful, and he ultimately has to face off against God himself. There's a lot more dramatic material there than there ever was in the Final Destination-like crux of the original two films. The vendetta the seven kamikaze priests vow against Damien also really puts the anti-Christ at risk, wherein the first two films his safety was always assured. Writer Andrew Birkin (most famous for his Peter Pan writings, of which you can certainly see "lost boys" aspects here) does a wonderful job of putting it all out on the table(laying it all on the alter?) for one truly thrilling battle for the ages.Not only is the story as sound as ever, but horror fans are really going to like the viciousness of the deaths throughout. With the seven vigilante monks going after Damien, and Damien himself killing off many others who stand in his way, the body count here is quite high, and like with the first two films, the producers don't hold back in staging an elaborate death scene. Since this had the films of the slasher era to compete with, the brutality of the carnage has been upped once more, and some of the deaths are quiet unsettling. The most notable being when the ambassador ties tape around the door knobs in his office, linking it all to his shotgun trigger, so when his colleagues enter his brains get splattered all over the presidential crest. Another sees a woman burn her infant son with a hot iron, and we memorably see the charred remains of the baby's face. One more, still, is when the first priest tries to kill Damien at a TV station, slipping up from the rafters and being dangled and burned in plastic as he melts in pain. The effects work is quite accomplished (done by A Clockwork Orange makeup artist Freddie Williamson), matching the menace of the acts themselves. Even the events that aren't gory still have a sinister quality to them, like when Damien, after killing an adversary at a fox hunt, rubs what he says to be "fox blood" on the face of a boy in initiation. With that and that uncomfortable rape scene, The Final Conflict certainly doesn't play it safe like a Hollywood movie should.A riveting thriller, through and grue, The Final Conflict certainly lives up to its title and offers Damien a fabulous final send off. The scope is so much larger than the first two films, and more than just a thriller it ends up becoming some grand theological statement of our times. It's pretty ballsy for a horror sequel to depict Christ on screen, but this one goes one further and gives us an ending so grand and fitting that it looks cut from Ben-Hur. As far as horror sequels go, the Omen III is certainly upper echelon. It's a shame it ended when it was just starting to hit its stride, but then again, given what would follow with the ill-advised fourth film, maybe they did good and quit while they were ahead. A must see! THE FINAL CONFLICT is quite an interesting film Damien grows up and the series ends on a satisfying note.

The Final Conflict arrives, and for its first third or so consequently develops, with a refreshing sense of change. Gone, during this time, is the framework often rife within the first two films of the series; films revolving around the life and times of an infant boy who happens to be the one that'll lead the world into oblivion on account of the fact he is the Antichrist. Back then, he was too young to really figure all that stuff out and the films were essentially about adults, or more specifically the boy's guardians, spending a good chunk of the feature trying to figure everything out before coming across the shocking revelation and then acting on it. They were, of course, foiled and thus we arrive at this third Omen movie with the young boy having grown up into a man: foreplay revolving around this antiheroic creature causing mischief and generally coming to be at odds with the functioning Christian world around him gone, replaced only with a full on acknowledgement that destruction and religious new order is his calling.Alas, there is sadly a point wherein we realise the film appears all too keen to fall back into old habits. The fact Sam Neill is now playing once-whipper snapper Damien Thorn as a grown up, and that instead of engaging in trips to the zoo wherein the animals will bolt at the first sign him as parental figures strive to work it all out, we get a group of priests struggle against finding the character so as to foil him themselves. In doing so, they will need a collection of daggers that have been knocking around since the first film; daggers crucial in Damien's demise and the liberating of the world from his potential evils.The film will begin with the daggers and the merry journey they've undergone over the years via excavations and pawn shops. We're made aware of the daggers very early on; aware of their importance in that the finding and acquiring of them are detailed to us in a way that could only suggest they will play an important role later on. Meanwhile, Thorn is enjoying life as a prophet of the apocalypse under the guise of presidency for a company ironically specialising in the helping and aiding of people, what with its Soya produce and charitable policies. Director Graham Baker would probably like you to read into Thorn's role, running in tandem with precisely what it is Thorn is, as a sort of statement on conglomerancies as a whole – this one has The Devil running it, although the anti-capitalist statements about these companies being run by individuals out to enslave and rule the ignorant masses gets a little lost, in spite of the fact they're quite good fun to read into.Thorn is a charismatic man. We witness him dominate a television interview just prior to putting his abilities we first observed in the second film (wherein he reeled off a whole number of dates to his history teacher) when we watch him advise the President of the United States, no less, on a delicate foreign situation with a string of facts and figures. There are those, of course, who are out to thwart this character but Thorn's indomitable personality and position of such distinction makes it hard for the group of Vatican priests out to kill him look much more than a gang of religious kooks with a maddening murderous agenda. What is refreshing is that they know what they must do from the off: the film one long conquest between these two sides of good and evil; not bogged down by what eventually got to be quite dull in the second film, as his step-father took an age to figure it all out before being granted the odd five minute burst at the end to act on it.With Damien striving to get those daggers himself, thus eliminating any threat of anyone turning the tables on him, and the priests tripping over themselves trying to eliminate the guy, the scene is set for an all out war complicated by a virtuous equivalent to Thorn due to be born in the near future (but wouldn't we all have to wait for him to be old enough to actually LEAD us in the war?) as well as journalist-come-love interest Kate Reynolds (Harrow) propping up proceedings. The film is an amiable failure, a film better than the often tedious second instalment and its procession of periodic creeping around as company takeover bids and grizzly episodic death sequences bogged down what was the continuation of a storyline detailing the impending end of the world. It's one thing to make the sorts of horror and content omnipresent within these films not frightening, another thing to make it all quite dull, but the second one managed it. This second sequel sidesteps said flaws, but is mired by that real lack of horror and hopelessness in its atmosphere often found throughout Donner's original. It's creepier than the second, but goofier than the first; a film with a sharp eye for carnage and what The Devil himself in human form might both do and say in his wry grins and swanning around with all this power, just do not expect an experience as Earth shattering as the nihilistic one threatening to doom all on planet Earth in the film. Well, all those of a Christian or Jewish faith at least

Damien Thorn is a full grown man and recently appointed Ambassador to Great Britain (the same position his father had years ago). And he is fully aware of his unholy destiny as the Antichrist, the false prophet. He has carefully been studying the signs for Jesus Christ's return to Earth and has decided the time is near. He sends his disciples all across Great Britain when an alignment of stars signifies his birth to kill any baby boy born on the morning of March 24, between the hours of midnight and six o'clock. Even one of Damien's closest assistants son is not exempt from this decree.But Damien's human side is getting the better of him as he starts seeing the popular journalist Kate Reynolds and they begin a relationship. He also forms an attachment to her son Peter, whom Damien takes under his wing and manipulates for his own evil.While this is going on the seven daggers of Megiddo have been rediscovered from the rubble of the old Thorn Museum which was burnt down in the last film. They are bought out of an auction and are sent to the Monastery that Damien's father visited when he was investigating the truth behind his son. Seven priests led by Father DeCarlo go to Britain and resolve to finish what Robert Thorn and his brother Richard started by killing Damien and reassuring the second coming of the Messiah. The plot for Omen 3 has a lot going for it but there's a lot of things that could've been done that weren't even touched upon. The relationship between Kate and Damien could've been an emotional struggle to the story, since it could allude that Damien might achieve redemption due to their relationship. Even one of his associates say that Reynolds is dangerous to be around but Damien is resolute in his path and not even 'love' can affect him. The priests are underdeveloped as well. Six are killed off rather quickly and DeCarlo isn't as strong a protagonist as Robert or Richard Thorn. The once brilliant supernatural death scenes that The Omen series is famous for are sort of replaced by intentional murders and accidents. Some are still impressive but they lose the sense of demonic intervention that the other two films had. Instead it is either Damien showing off his power, or one of his disciples that commits a murder. There's not a lot of speculation in them in that they all don't look like they could be common accidents. However, the film does have its fair share of disturbing scenes. There's a scene where a woman sees a vision of her baby burnt. She then takes an iron and approaches the baby and the rest is left to our imagination. Another scene involves Damien on a hunt with a group of Beagles. Two priests ambush him and while he kill one of them off himself, he tells the pack to kill the other and they proceed to tear him apart. The acting in the film is also quite good. Sam Neill as Damien provides a dark and rather frightening performance for the now adult Antichrist and he does an excellent job throughout the movie. The rest of the cast perform their roles well but there's nothing that really stands out in the ensemble. Jerry Goldsmith provides us with another excellent score that builds up suspense and makes it clear that evil is at work. For all three movies his score remains as one of the best in the Horror genre.Overall The Final Conflict has a lot of problems but the film isn't entirely bad. It's worth watching to bring a conclusion to The Omen series but will probably leave a few fans wanting a better ending.