REVIEW: Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981)

Zzzzzz....zzzzz....oh, sorry, I just dozed off during today's movie. My bad. It's just...man, this is dull.

Director: Graham Baker

Starring: The Soundtrack, Sam Neill

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082377/

Man, this is shit. Who would ever willingly watch this slop anyway? It's about as convincing and scary as your grandma's old phone books. There's more padding in this movie than in your average tampon factory. You could find a better Satanic end-of-world story in a Sunday School picture book. But it's one thing to talk about Omen III: The Final Conflict and quite another to actually watch this half-assed cobble of uninteresting crap. So, if you can stay awake, let's try and slog through this stinker.

The film begins with Damien, played this time by Sam Neill. You know, the guy from In the Mouth of Madness…well I sure hope he doesn’t…do anything he would have done in that movie…Okay, this joke sucked, moving on. He is actually aware of his role as the Antichrist now, and actively prepares for the day he can finally take over the world, which is coming soon. To do this, he needs to become the ambassador to Britain. However, there’s already another guy who has that job. So what does Damien do?

Realizing what movie he was in, this guy suddenly became very scared and later went back and constructed an elaborate scheme to kill himself. The dog later went on to star in The Stuff.

Okay, so the caption may or may not have been true, but here's a slightly different version of events: through an incredibly long, drawn out sequence of nothing, backed up with the film’s ludicrously over the top soundtrack, we see that the ambassador is hypnotized by a dog, or something, and then wires his office doors to a gun which will shoot him in the face when someone opens the door. So why couldn’t Damien have just hypnotized him to shoot himself in the head? Why all the pointless padding? Oh, right, because the film had no actual captivating material, just this nonsense. Right.

And yeah, the soundtrack is REALLY over the top. I know a lot of people praise this movie's soundtrack, and sure, the music itself is fine I guess, but when you play this really froofy, overblown symphonic nonsense when it's just some guy sitting down in his chair...it doesn't exactly work, movie. It's just kinda stupid.

Then we get about five minutes straight of pointless montages of a bunch of priests preparing for the coming conflict. We get some shots of them winning some knives in an auction that apparently can kill Damien. Then we see them all standing around looking out the window of a discarded Name of the Rose set-piece at a constellation of stars, alongside an ass-numbingly long sequence of them explaining why it’s so important. I’ll sum it up in one sentence – they find out that the reincarnation of Christ will be born soon. That’s it. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO WASTE SO MUCH TIME? God.

"Man, this is really getting in the way of my game of Pong."

Oh, but one of them said it’s the final countdown, so I have to post this:

Ah, much better than the movie.

Meanwhile, Damien talks to a statue of Jesus in his alone-time and shouts ominous, evil stuff at it because, well, otherwise I guess we wouldn’t understand his evilness, or something. And he also starts seeing this reporter lady named Kate Reynolds, who has a son, and that’s about it. The group of priests plans to kill him while sitting around a dark, cramped room, and eventually spring their attack by trying to jump him as he’s doing a TV appearance, because THAT’S truly the greatest way to do it! These guys are just geniuses!

Wow, that plan really went down IN FLAMES! HA HA HA...oh wait, no.

Yeah, just a word of warning…the priests in this movie are idiots. They really don’t have any better strategies to get Damien? I mean, look at this scene, where Damien and a bunch of other guys, including Kate Reynolds’ son, are out hunting. They have one priest, because I guess ambushing him with more than that would be a dumb idea, lure him up to this bridge where this happens:

What is this, a pound opening? This really isn't tense or scary, movie.

Yep, dogs…that’s all this movie has. God. The monks can’t put together a good assassination plot for the life of them and the Antichrist is as lame as can be; what am I supposed to latch onto in this movie?! Eh. Still better than The Hulk’s villain who utilized dogs.

Yep...still lame.

There’s another attempt on his life where he’s lured out to this church in the middle of nowhere following this one old priest. The movie DID take my advice this time, as there ARE more priests teaming up this time. However, Damien pulls the old bait-and-switch, as when they think he walks through the door, they jump him and stab him to death, only to find out afterwards that it was actually one of their own priests they stabbed. Because I guess checking beforehand would’ve been stupid! These guys couldn’t plot their way out of a paper bag even if it had neon glowing sign directing them how to!

So then, and I’m not kidding here, the next fifteen minutes or so is just infanticide. That’s right, we get to see a bunch of infants getting killed, because one of them (of the ones all born between midnight and 6 AM the previous day) is supposed to be the reincarnation of Christ. Isn’t this just so peachy and cheerful? It’s pretty tasteless and doesn’t even have much of an impact visually, but there is one part that I really like:

BEACH BALL KILL! The ball hits the stroller and it rolls out in front of a truck, like a bad 1950s comedy routine gone wrong. Yeah, that’s the most random, out-of-nowhere kill I’ve seen in an Omen movie since…well, about ten minutes ago, I guess. How come nobody in this crazy world can come up with any plausible, efficient kills? Why are they all so ridiculous? And for that matter, what if the woman or someone else caught up to the stroller and stopped it before the truck hit it? Would Damien just go “Oh, snap,” and then make the baby spontaneously combust?

So it turns out there’s really only one baby left and it belongs to Damien’s right hand man. Now this brings up another stupid moment – all movie up to now, the assistant guy has been telling everyone that his son was born BEFORE the cut-off date for the supposed Christ reincarnations. Even though he’s been lying, for some reason Damien just went along with it. How can Damien not tell that his assistant is lying? Can’t he like…see into peoples’ minds or something? And even if he couldn’t, why not just look at the medical records for proof? He knows where all the OTHER babies are that were born at the right time, but he can’t figure out that one of his own employees is lying to him? For a future ruler of all darkness, Damien kinda sucks.

Oh, and how about this, where the priests get so desperate for ideas that they just start going around door-to-door of all the people with new babies born who could be the Christ reincarnation and telling them they’re in danger. He talks to Damien’s right hand man’s wife, and tells her what’s going on, and she believes him. However, he then talks to that Kate Reynolds chick, who’s supposed to be a smart reporter, and she doesn’t believe him, as she just goes to hang out with him the next day anyway and ends up having sex with him, because again, being the Antichrist gets you chicks:

She really knows how to pick 'em. How does this supposedly rational journalist not see who Damien really is, anyway?  Oh yeah because the plot depends on stupidity...

And all at the same time, her son has been possessed, or something, by Damien and is now working for him to spy on the priests. Man, banging the woman AND using her son as a minion; Damien sure knows how to get around! That priest guy comes back to talk to Kate again, and says that he knows that her son is working for Damien. Apparently he DOESN’T realize that the kid has been stalking him the whole time, though…pretty stupid…man, I’m bored; let’s just wrap this up in a paragraph:

Damien kidnaps the son and makes Kate lead her to where the Christ child is, because somehow she knows that, I guess. The kid dies – man, this movie really likes killing off kids for some reason – and then the priest dies, too. Damien wanders around a bit, wondering how come he’s fighting against his girlfriend, as in real life, Sam Neill and Lisa Harrow were dating around this time. But I guess they were having some problems:

This movie is a waste of time if I ever saw one. Nothing has any weight or drama to it, all the deaths are stupid as hell, there are a million little inconsistencies and plot-holes, the soundtrack is silly, the acting is bland and the story is completely trite and played out, with no surprises. Why would I ever watch this again? Oh, wait, no reason. Omen III is horrible and anything involved with it is horrible, too. A Satanic film so bad that it actually turns around and just starts reading the Bible again.

The images do not belong to me, they are copyright of their original owners.

REVIEW: 11/11/11 (Asylum version) (2011)

Of all the infamous institutions in the movie world, I haven’t looked at any Asylum films yet. For those of you blessedly uninformed up until now, The Asylum is a hack movie studio that makes money off of cheap direct to DVD knock-offs of movies that just came out in theaters. They’re slipped into just about every video store you can find and also even on Redbox and Netflix now, and the studio puts so little money into them that they’ll always gain money back on them in return, no matter how horrible the film does critically or commercially.

Pretty much all of their films are shoe-string budget versions of blockbusters that come out every year – ‘King of the Lost World’ for the 2005 King Kong remake, ‘Snakes on a Train’ instead of Snakes on a Plane; you get the idea. They’re called ‘tie ins’ by the producers, which I guess is a clever way of saying ‘we latch onto these actual good movies like leeches onto an unsuspecting cow’s belly.’ Despicable.

Given all of this devilry, would you be surprised if I said that the movie I’m reviewing today is among the lowest of lows a movie can ever achieve? I pay $7.99 for my Netflix every month and I want a refund for this! My eyes! They burn!

Director: Keith Adams

Starring: Jon Bridell, Erin Coker

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2015261/

And I didn’t even know this was an Asylum movie at first. I thought it was the real 11-11-11 picture by Darren Lynn Bousman, that idiot who directed the SAW sequels and stuff. But no! This is far worse! I especially like how the guy behind Asylum maintains seriously and honestly that his movies are “original stories.” Yeah, because changing the dashes to diagonal slashes really makes all the difference, right? I guess I’m missing the point of all the rip-offs of The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby this movie has, too. Truly this is the better, more original film over those moldy old films! YOU’RE SUCH A GENIUS, ASYLUM FILMS GUY. Let’s get this radioactive alligator crap over with before I have an aneurysm.

Okay, so the film starts out with three store mannequins driving along and exchanging dialogue I could write better in my sleep. They run over a cat, the dad says they’re on a great adventure…wow, I hate these bland, milquetoast characters already! The first scene and I’m already wishing I was getting a root canal instead of watching this. Wow. That’s an accomplishment.

Alright, check out that AWESOME lighting scheme! Isn't it just obnoxious as hell the way it makes everything look like an awful low-budget 1970s TV series? Yeah, get used to that. And yes, he thinks running over a cat in the street is a great adventure for them. I'd hate to hear what he thinks of witnessing a drive-by shooting, or going by a horrendous car accident...

They get to their new house, and apparently the dad is a new teacher at the school in town. They get shown around the place by the most awkward real estate lady ever, who is about as convincing as an actor as I would be trying to pretend I like this movie. There’s also this weird old lady who comes up looking for her cat – the same one they ran over before? I don’t know; if so, the mom and dad don’t try to tell her or anything…I guess they just like being cruel and unusual.

"FEEEEEEL MY OVERRRRAAAACTING...I will win the Oscar this year if it kills me!"

They meet a few other people, and there’s a very common thread in all of the interactions that this movie has: THEY’RE ALL AWKWARD AS HELL. I mean Jesus, what is up with these people? The acting is just phenomenally awful! It's never convincing, never emotional, never even the slightest bit believable. What is this, Awkwardtown, USA? In fact, that’s what I’m calling it for the rest of the movie.

So the family adjusts to life in their new home while the weird old lady tries un-subtly to lure the little boy Nat into her garage. Why do I get the idea she’s actually on the national sex-offender registry? And you’ll notice something about Nat as well – HE NEVER SAYS ANYTHING. This must have been the easiest acting job ever. What were his directions? “Hey, kid, just stand there with that blank, confused look on your face for the entire movie. It’s cool; you only have about three and a half lines total. Just keep that dazed stare on. That's good acting for real!” Poor kid.

He's like a wooden block. I'd also like to note that even when everything is going wrong and people are clearly bad influences on this kid, as well as his mother being sick and in bed all the time, it NEVER crosses the father's mind to send him to a friggin' public school! You're an idiot, 11/11/11 dad. You're an idiot.

Things really get interesting, though, when the wife is taking a bath later that night. Her husband calls her name a couple of times and she doesn’t respond. So he goes to bed, I guess? And then she sees the clock says 11:11, so she starts screaming and then finds out that she’s got blood in the bathtub!

Yay, blood in the bathtub! Perfect way to spend a night, right The Asylum guys?

Okay, okay, time out. So what, the husband was just going to go to bed even though his wife wasn’t responding when he called her name? Why wasn't she responding anyway? Are those walls just sound-proof? Apparently not, if he can hear her screaming just two seconds later! WTF? At least try to have your scenes make a LITTLE sense, you goddamn movie!

Anyway, they go to the doctor, who tells them that the wife is pregnant and thus has to lie down in bed for weeks and not do anything or else she’ll have a miscarriage. Yup, she can’t even do basic things like walk around unsupervised. The husband even buys into it – “Be careful, honey, you might have a miscarriage,” he says when she’s doing nothing more than just standing in their house, slightly agitated. You know, movie, I’m no expert on these things, but I’m pretty sure a miscarriage isn’t something that just happens at every slightest emotional moment. Just saying, you know – consider doing some research next time. It makes you look like you’re NOT a mouth-breathing mongoloid who makes trash cinema for a living.

So they plan to hire a nanny for Nat and a nurse to take care of the wife. For the nurse, they get a fat blonde lady, and for the nanny they interview a few different people. The first one is a nice, level-headed and sweet girl who pretty much fits everything one would want in a babysitter. So of course she gets beat up and murdered in broad daylight by this other chick, Danielle, right after.

So I guess the explanation for all these broad daylight murders is supposed to be that everyone in the town is in on it, and so they don't intervene. But what's the deal with this chick, then? Was she literally the only person in town aside from the main characters who wasn't corrupt and crazy? ANSWER ME, MOVIE!

The fight choreography is beyond abysmal, I've seen better from home-made movies my friends and I made when I was 10, and REALLY, broad daylight? You’re telling me NOBODY is gonna think this is even a LITTLE shocking? That is just…ugh. Moving on. Danielle interviews for the babysitter job, too, and not nearly as convincingly – you’d think someone trying to infiltrate the family would do a better job at acting nice at first, but hey, it’s an Asylum movie!

The father calls the first girl, but Danielle stole her phone and answers it, pretending to be the first girl, and says she doesn’t want the job. Two seconds later the father calls Danielle, who answers in almost the same voice, and yet he can’t tell there’s something weird going on. She doesn’t even try to disguise her voice! I guess it’s a good thing everyone in Awkwardtown, USA is incredibly retarded, huh?

"Oh, I was totally prepared for having to impersonate a dead girl I've never met...I had better not change my vocal inflection even a little bit. That way no one will ever suspect that it's me!" Wait, what?

One of the recurring themes in the movie seems to be that, in a vaguely Hot Fuzz-esque way, everyone in this town seems to be in on this really vague plot centering around Nat and his birthday on November 11. So we get a lot of really silly scenes where people randomly barge into their house and make stilted, unbelievable conversation, but one of my favorites is in the school actually, where one of the teachers is about to talk to the husband, when the janitor goes “Don’t screw this up.” I don’t know why, but I just find that funny for some reason…the JANITOR walking around picking up trash is the one who knows what’s up, the one bossing the teachers around. There’s something not quite right about that.

So then we get this completely nonsensical scene where this retard comes into their house and talks about how a bunch of people were murdered in the house, speaking in a very casual, unfitting tone of voice and looking like he was blackmailed to be in the movie. And, you guessed it, it’s incredibly awkward! Then he goes outside and gets killed brutally in the middle of the street. Yes, in broad daylight again. No, I don’t think the makers of this movie made it past the first couple of days of Kindergarten.

BROAD DAYLIGHT is the BEST time to commit murder, and especially in the middle of a happy suburban street! This movie is teaching me so much today!

The old lady tries unconvincingly to kill Nat some more. The father even yells at Nat not to talk to her, and she still tries anyway, because hey, what didn’t work the first five thousand times is still worth trying again! This whole character is just a mystery to me. This is really the best she can do to try to get that kid? Just…continuously begging him to come with her, over and over again, with no changes to her plan? She doesn’t have, oh I don’t know, ANY OTHER IDEAS? Imagine if the Roadrunner cartoons were this unimaginative. They wouldn’t be nearly as popular.

In the middle of the night, Nat faints on the floor after drawing with blood on the walls for some reason. Will it be explained? Nope! Too bad. You thought you were getting a story in this movie? What a laugh.

Yup, we're literally given zero explanation for why this is happening. Not even a mention of it anywhere.

So then we get…an overly long sequence of the father walking around at night while the camera zooms in on random objects like weird green piggy banks that I guess every suburban family has. Must have missed that trend!

Eugh. That's absolutely creepy. I wouldn't want to see this thing looking at me in the dark...

What do you think the idea behind this was? “Man, we really need to waste some more time and visually rape our audience some more! How about we just put in random, drawn out shots of goofy things that won’t make sense to anyone? Yeah, that’ll work. They’ll be so sleepy by the end of this scene, they’ll stay for the whole rest of the movie!”

My sentiments exactly.

My God this is torture! It’s like having acid poured over my brain! This whole pointless sequence seriously just keeps dragging on and on, like they physically want to hurt their viewers!

Okay, okay, it’s over…so, movie, pray tell. What’s next, a scene where the dad is driving home and sees all the bad guys through the windows of their van, in the middle of the day, on the side of an average suburban street, making up more conspiracies? No, even this movie wouldn’t be that stupid—

FGDSGFJSHG...*brain explodes*

HOLY HELL! What, was the side of that populated, normal street REALLY the best place for them to congregate? They couldn’t wait until nighttime to do it? Why am I even questioning this crap? Clearly it wasn’t written by anyone with the right amount of chromosomes! Ugh, screw it; moving on…

Nat, for no reason at all, stabs his mother as she’s lying immobile in bed still. Is he possessed? Is he trying to get rid of the baby inside her like in the Omen movies? No idea…it’s never explained. This whole plot is just weird. We have apparently two different groups trying to get their hands on this kid, one of whom is trying to kill him and the other trying to protect him, but neither one seems to have a reason, and it’s pretty lopsided, too – the side trying to kill him seems to just be the crazy old lady with no acting coach! What, did they just not have enough money to hire more actors to help her? I probably shouldn’t even joke about that, actually…it’s probably true.

"I WILL WIN AN OSCAAAAAAR! This is my last chance in the movie!"

So yeah, then we learn that although the mom was lying around drugged the entire movie before this, it’s getting stabbed that finally gives her the power to sit up straight again…nope, not gonna question it; I want to get this over with. Makes sense to me!

There’s some other stuff that happens, with some silly satanic ritual that’s more like something you’d see in a Scooby Doo cartoon or something. The father saves Nat from being killed by the old witch lady, only for Nat to go up and kill the mother…for some reason…and then the father kills the housekeeper and goes into the shed to kill his own son while the town cheers him on. The whole thing is played up in an Omen-esque fashion like killing Nat will save the world – but none of it is explained! So what am I supposed to gain from it? There was no story! This was an affront to all of my senses!

Yup, it ends with the main character being arrested, by possibly the slowest moving police officer ever - he seriously takes like a whole minute to put the handcuffs on this guy. Does he just have arthritis? And oh yeah, real peachy ending, too. What was I supposed to learn from this again?

Yeah, I didn’t like this one. I mean WOW, this was awful. I didn't even come close to covering everything wrong with this; I had to skip large sections of it just to condense this into a readable-length review for the site. There's a ton of other shit I didn't even mention that's wrong with this. Everything about it was horrendous; from the Z-list acting to the lighting which looked like it was out of a 1970s sitcom to the wretched formless mass that was the ‘story.’ Nothing worked! How did anyone ever look at this and feel any kind of pride? How does The Asylum look at any of their productions and feel anything but sickened self-loathing?

Personally, I find The Asylum’s approach to filmmaking to be incredibly insulting. Their professed intent to ‘tell stories’ (haha) doesn’t matter at all if what they're producing is so obviously lacking effort! If you’re not going to try a little, I think it’s safe to say your services are no longer of use to us, The Asylum. I declare this movie a complete abomination upon everything good about humankind and art! What a wretched piece of hack-work. Avoid, avoid, avoid!