Sam Neill Starred In The Worst Sequel Of An Iconic Horror Franchise

Graham Baker's 1981 horror thriller "The Final Conflict" tells the story of one Damien Thorne (Sam Neill), a rich and powerful CEO who inherits a UK ambassadorship. Damien is happy with the new position. He also begins dating a young woman named Kate (Lisa Harrow), whose son Peter (Barnaby Holm) looks up to him as a father figure. Damien is happy to have the boy's attention and begins to nurture and mold him.

Oh yes, did I mention Damien is the Antichrist? Yes, he's the same Damien seen in Richard Donner's 1976 blockbuster "The Omen," now grown into an adult and commanding an army of cultists. In Don Taylor's 1978 sequel "Damien: Omen II," the young lad (played by Jonathan Scott-Taylor) was shocked to learn that he was the Antichrist and hated the idea that he would be forced to do evil by his mere birthright. By the end of that film, though, Damien had started to come to terms with his demonic status. It was telling that the Antichrist was being groomed to commit world destruction in a military school.

By the third chapter in the "Omen" film series (alternately titled "The Final Conflict" or "Omen III: The Final Conflict"), Damien is not just at peace with being the Antichrist but loving every minute of it. When he gets more power, he is pleased as punch to wield it. Thus, when a cadre of priests unearths the Seven Daggers of Megiddo, which are required to kill the Antichrist, Damien happily murders them preemptively. The rest of the plot of "The Final Conflict" involves the Second Coming of Christ and Damien's efforts to stop it.

It's worth noting immediately that "The Final Conflict" sucks out loud. It got very bad reviews and even hardcore "Omen" fans looked at it with embarrassment.

There are a few interesting concepts in the "Omen" sequels. In Richard Donner's first "Omen," audiences knew that little Damien was the Antichrist and was destined to destroy the Earth in the name of Satan, but it was a little unclear as to how he would actively do such a thing. It was obvious that Damien was protected by wicked, demonic forces that could go all "Final Destination" on their victims by killing them with falling church spires and flying panes of glass, but Damien never, say, picked up a chainsaw and started taking out victims on his own. In "Omen II," it's explained that the Antichrist will be inserted (by Satan and his earthly minions) into a position of power by birth. Damien is the son of an international ambassador, and he eventually comes into control of Thorne Industries, which has sway over the world's food supply. This means Damien has access to politics, industry, and the military.

All it would take is one wicked a-hole at the center of things to end all life on Earth.

"The Final Conflict," though, doesn't really do anything interesting with those concepts. Damien has squirreled away a Satanic church in his attic, which is a novel wrinkle, but the film only ever depicts the Antichrist as a smirking politician who barks about the return of "The Nazarene." Oh yes, the plot involves the re-birth of Christ and Damien's efforts to assassinate the infant before his world domination plans can be brought to fruition. The titular final conflict involves four or five people meeting at a church and trying to stab one another. Bible passages float by the screen right before the credits roll. If this was meant to be the Final Conflict between Good and Evil, it kind of sucks.

If you can believe it, "Omen IV: The Awakening" is practically as bad as "The Final Conflict," though it at least manages to be weirder. Fox, wanting to milk its moribund franchise for a few more dollars, elected to make a TV movie sequel to "The Omen" in 1991, in the process kind of rebooting the franchise's timeline. This time, the Antichrist may be Delia (Asia Vieira), a girl adopted by the skittish Karen (Faye Grant), who was previously unable to have children. It's eventually revealed that Delia is Damien's daughter and that she is expecting a brother who will be the Antichrist, Mark II. Because of a very unusual demonic conceit, Delia is said to have been pregnant with her own brother (!) while she was still a fetus in her mother's womb (!!) and gave birth to her own brother before she herself was born (!!!). "Omen IV" is essentially about an Antichrist turducken.

In 2006, when all the major horror properties were being remade with impunity, "The Omen" was re-upped by director John Moore. That film starred Julia Stiles as Damien's mother and Liev Schreiber as his father. Like most of the remakes of its era, "The Omen" was more or less a high-octane redux of the original. It wasn't very well-reviewed, but it managed to make $119.3 million on a $25 million budget. This is why so many horror films wound up being remade in the 2000s.

The antichrist lay dormant for a long while after that before finally returning in 2024 for Arkasha Stevenson's "The First Omen," a prequel to the original "Omen." That film centered on Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), a put-upon nun who is sent to work at an Italian orphanage. There, she begins having demonic visions and uncovers a shadowy conspiracy of nuns who are seemingly manipulating births and birth records. Naturally, they have something to do with creating and protecting the forthcoming Antichrist. "The First Omen," unlike the many "Omen" sequels, was quite excellent. It was stylish, scary, and Free has a few glorious moments of demonic freak-out. At least we've ended on a good note.