Movie Review: Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981)

Sometimes known as just The Final Conflict (as it is on the poster up there), Omen 3 reminds me a lot of another relatively hated second sequel - Poltergeist 3. I mean, both O3 and P3 were decidedly nowhere near as good as the original films they were based on, but they were also, at least to me, a slight improvement over the first sequels which did nobody justice. The Final Conflict seems to be universally, um, unloved by fans, but I can't lie. I liked it - if only for Sam Neill, who may be the movie's only saving grace.

Damien Thorn is all growed up now, in his 30s and running the internationally successful Thorn Company. Unlike the Damien of Omen 2, this Damien is well aware of his status as Antichrist and has all kinds of acolytes and fun stuff like that. When science discovers a sign in the sky related to the arrival of the Second Coming, Damien works to defeat his rival before it can get to him. Meanwhile, a group of priests work desperately to hunt Damien down, armed with the only weapons on earth that can destroy him for good.

I guess I shouldn't like Omen 3 (seems to be the popular thing to do), but I can't help that there's something about it that I sort of dig. The story is not overly ridiculous or outlandish, and in fact is a good continuation of the overall Omen story, where Damien has finally risen to power and must fight against his one real enemy in order to take over the earth or something. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ would definitely put a damper in his plans. Anyway. I will say that the story of the movie does fall a bit into the realm of the hokey - and the wildly inappropriate - a little bit in the third act with several scenes of infanticide. That means that they kill babies. Totally wrong. Also, I have to admit that not only is the ending incredibly anticlimactic and disappointment, it is also quite possible the most LAME ending I have ever seen.

But you know what? Sam Neill is in this. And with his performance as Damien, he's able to save the movie - at least for me. He's what any good Antichrist should be - evil and charming and sexy at the same time. He's got a smile that makes you think he's cute and he's got a smile that makes you want to run out of the room. The dialogue is kinda stupid sometimes, but somehow Neill makes it work for him. There's this one scene where Damien goes into a room in his attic that has a statue of Jesus on the cross - with his head turned backwards. Damien just starts rambling all this stuff, apparently to God or Jesus, how sick he is of their morality bullshit and how he wants hell on earth. Out of anybody else's mouth, I don't know how this scene would have played out. Neill manages to get through the whole thing without going over-the-top ridiculous at all and instead gives a hell of a performance for this monologue. 

Two things that everybody seems to be compelled to bitch about with Omen 3 are the timeline and the daggers. Omen 1 came out in 1976. Omen 3 came out in 1981. Clearly, Damien could not have turned 32 by that time unless he grew up in another dimension (which, in this story, is not entirely out of the realm of believability). Whatever. I don't care. What time period the movie takes place in is irrelevant to the movie itself and should just be looked at as typical Hollywood trickery. Next.

The other thing is the daggers. In The Omen, my main man Bugenhagen (still love that name) gives Robert Thorn the Seven Daggers of Meggido and tells him that the way to destroy the Antichrist is to stab him with the daggers in the form of a cross on his body. Admittedly, I was bit confused when the seven priests in Omen 3 each took a dagger for their chance to kill the Antichrist, thinking like everybody else that they needed all seven at the same time. Apparently what I did not retain from The Omen was that the first dagger would extinguish his physical life force, and the rest his spiritual life force. They could use one dagger to kill him, but his soul or whatever would still live and he'd be able to come back in another form later. So these priests are pretty much slackers, and think a half-assed attempt at destroying the Antichrist will do for now.

Actually, the priests suck at everything having to do with their assassination attempt. First, they do the thing with dividing up the daggers instead of all seven of them ambushing Damien at once or something. Then, the first assassin dies a really crazy death that he basically causes himself. He's trying to kill Damien while he's doing a TV interview and the priest climbs up in the rafters with all the electrical crap and... I don't even really remember how he manages it, but the priest ends up swinging from the ceiling ON FIRE with everybody just standing there watching him. Two other priests get themselves trapped underground, one gets thrown from a bridge... these guys just suck. But whoever thought that priests would make good assassins anyway? I mean, they should've hired a professional and been done with it.

Though neither sequel has been able to live up to the awesomeness of the original Omen movie, I can't say that I entirely hated Omen 3: The Final Conflict. Sam Neill does a lot of the heavy lifting but there are also some unintentionally funny scenes (a guy getting killed by a pack of adorable little foxhounds) and some disturbing scenes (off-camera baby murders by drowning and ironing) that make this movie at least an interesting one to watch. 

And even though I didn't really hate this movie, it does make me more than weary for the third sequel, Omen IV: The Awakening. I don't know if I'm going to subject myself to that yet. 

Movie Review: Daybreakers (2009)

Much like 30 Days of Night, Daybreakers was another vampire movie that I avoided seeing for a long time because I thought I would hate it. It looked too stylized and perfect for my taste and preference for what a vampire movie should be. I also didn't know anything about the plot, and if I had, I probably would have given it a chance sooner. It may not be for everyone, but I somewhat enjoyed this flick.

In 2019, years after a plague has turned most of the world into vampires, the human population is rapidly dwindling. Edward Dalton, a vampire and scientist at the world's largest "human farm," has been working with a team to develop a blood substitute to make up for the lack of human blood supply. But when a ragtag group of humans offers him the chance to introduce a different way to fix the problem, he dares to go against his own kind and the most powerful vampire in the country to end the populace's suffering.

I really like this story. Remember in Blade when Deacon Frost says "We should be ruling the humans! These people are our food!"? I've always had that same thought. So finally with Daybreakers we have a movie that explores the possibility of vampires being the dominant species on the planet - and the downsides that come along with it. However, these vampires are not necessarily evil. In fact, they're almost just like they were when they were human. They do have the insatiable bloodlust (which they can now buy at restaurants and coffee kiosks) and the enjoyment of immortality, but they've also had to put a lot of work into certain technological modifications to their cars, homes, and buildings in order to function during the day.

The story doesn't veer too far off from the traditional lore of the vampire, which pleases me. They burst into flames when exposed to sunlight or when staked through the heart, and have the cute little fangs and glowy eyes. The only point where the movie goes off in its own direction is in the exploration for a cure for vampirism, which I don't completely get. Sunlight apparently can both kill and cure vampires in Daybreakers - a limited amount of UV actually somehow manages to jumpstart their heart and turn them human again. Um, if you say so, I guess. One thing they included that I thought was hilarious was how much all the vampires smoked. Because, really, why shouldn't they? That was a nice little detail.

Ethan Hawke isn't really in a lot of movies anymore so I couldn't remember if I like him or not before I watched this movie. I guess he did a nice job but I wasn't totally blown away by his performance. Sam Neill is dead sexy as a greedy vampire king. He's smarmy and unlikable, but he wasn't evil enough in the role. He didn't seem like that big of a villain or threat for Ed and the humans. Willem Dafoe was still slightly off-kilter as he always is but he was at his most enjoyable here for me.

There is some fairly hardcore gore in Daybreakers with people being bitten and ripped in half, which was a lot more than I expected. The transformation of the blood-deprived vamps turning into bat-like creatures was nice and the makeup was really great on them. However, there is a bit of the evil CGI and CGI blood that we all dread, especially in the scene where the bat breaks into Ed's house but that was the only time I really noticed it. Overall the film is very stylish and sleek, with a lot of clean lines and muted coloring. They make very good use of shadows in specific scenes that make it look really cool.

Looking at it, I probably shouldn't like the movie as much as I do because it is very reminiscent of the Underworld films, which I'm not a fan of. Daybreakers worked for me, though. I'm not jumping through hoops at its amazingness, but it was genuinely entertaining for the time it took to watch it.

Movie Review: In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

Hi, John Carpenter. So I just watched In the Mouth of Madness (obviously) and I have a confession to make. I've said for a while now that I love you and your movies, and I really and truly do. But the truth is that I only just recently - like in the past few months - saw a good chunk of your movies. Halloween, of course, I know by heart but I decided to catch up on the rest of your oeuvre, and found out that my knowledge of your work was miniscule. And it's still going to be a little miniscule (got a few more movies left to see) but I feel more confident in saying this: YOU RULE, BUDDY!

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad plot: John Trent is an insurance investigator hired to find the hottest horror author, Sutter Cane, who has gone missing. With the aid of Cane's editor, Linda Styles, Trent is led to Hobb's End, New Hampshire - a fictional town from Cane's novels which has suddenly become all too real. What is fiction and what is reality becomes blurred as events from the newest Sutter Cane novel seem like they are really happening. 

Let's start out by saying that I am now officially in love with both John Carpenter and Sam Neill. I always kinda knew that Neill ruled (Jurassic Park, anyone? And Event Horizon is off the freaking chain) but he's not as prolific as some actors so I sometimes forget that he even exists. Then I see a movie like In the Mouth of Madness and realize again how hella cool he is. It's partly the voice - I'm a sucker for great voices - but seeing an actor like him deal with all the batshit crazy stuff that happens in this movie makes me love him all the more.

So Sutter Cane, in this movie, is apparently way cooler than Stephen King. A blasphemous remark to me, but that's beside the point. People go literally crazy when they read this guy and his newest book, In the Mouth of Madness, is about the apocalypse that starts in Hobb's End. Trent is at first convinced that Cane's disappearance is an elaborate hoax for publicity even when he actually goes to Hobb's End - a place that does not exist on the map - and more and more freaky stuff happens. Linda tries to tell him that it's all in his books and his fiction is reality, but that's obviously crazy, right? Not possible? The thing that bugged me about this the first time around was why Linda seemed totally convinced that what Cane wrote became true, instead of the more obvious answer that he based what he wrote on this place. But that of course turned out to be totally wrong and I felt like an idiot for a while. Anyway.

If you're confused by the plot, don't worry, because there is a ton of freak-ass imagery here to keep you distracted from not really knowing what's going on. We got a guy attacking Sam Neill with an axe, paintings that move and change, various squiggly and tentacle-y demons, and one very traumatizing scene where Linda crawls around the road with her head turned upside down. *shudder* Won't be forgetting that. There are excellent effects by the boys at KNB - great mechanical creatures and the makeup on the people who go mad after reading Sutter Cane's novels are pretty gross. Not to mention those scary looking kids and the poor three-legged dog. 

If you like a bit of humor with your horror (and I always do), there are a few subtle bits in this film. Sam Neill as a nut in the nuthouse are entertaining - there's something about the way he does his face and eyes that almost always has a touch of comedy in it. But my favorite part was one including the old lady at the hotel. Remember this? When she's talking to Trent and then he walks away the camera pans down to show that she's got her old, naked husband handcuffed to her ankle? On one side this is incredibly hilarious, and on the other a tad disturbing. Great little moment either way.

The ending is fantastic. The movie is bookended with scenes of Trent in an asylum, telling his story of his search for Sutter Cane to some doctor whose affiliation is never revealed. By the end, the madness of Cane has reached the asylum and Trent walks out of his padded room to a devastated and empty town. He goes to a theater showing the movie version of "In the Mouth of Madness" and sees that the movie is starring himself with scenes from his own experiences. Either he and everything he's been through is simply a work of fiction OR there really are demons that told Cane what to write and all of it, the apocalypse, is coming true. Whichever way you see it, this is an unhappy ending, but a delightful twist at the same time.

Sidenote: Who should I see pop up in this movie most unexpectedly? 

The return of Vigo the Carpathian! Cool! How could anyone forget that distinctive face? Has nothing to do with the movie really, but you might have laughed at me when I squealed and pointed at the TV, saying "Vigo! It's Vigo the Carpathian! 'Alright, give me angry. Yes! Good! Hey Vigs, do the girls like you? Huh? What about the guys?'" Much like all children of the 80s, I have watched Ghostbusters (in this case, Ghostbusters 2) WAY too much. But whatever, because those movies rule. 

There's really not a lot of exposition and the movie's 90-minute time clock counts down fast, but that is more of a good thing than a bad thing. The movie never gets boring and there's always something macabre or fantastical around the next bend that keeps your mind on its toes. 

So now that I've taken care of not having seen In the Mouth of Madness, The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13, or The Thing up until now, I've gotta start plowing through those other flicks. They Live is next, I believe.