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The Final Conflict
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The 1970s-and-beyond cycle of demon child films – particularly the Omen series, of which this forms the third instalment – are fanciful creations. They mix natural disasters, Biblical prophecies and purely invented mythologies into heady, apocalyptic cocktails. Here, the demon child Damien has grown into an adult played by Sam Neill (in his spooky Possession phase). He is busy infiltrating the highest positions of political power in order to turn the masses into his evil flock. Underneath all the cosmic blather about Good and Evil, it’s clear what this film is truly about: the complete breakdown of the social order at the very moment that children no longer agree to continue the corrupt ways of their parents. In order to restore the status quo with a ‘final conflict’, the film goes into overdrive – which reveals just how desperately in trouble our real world is these days. Director Graham Baker (Impulse, 1984) is exceptionally skilled at rendering everyday objects, actions and characters as very, very creepy. On that plane, he knowingly reaches back to the 1960s origin of ‘demon seed’/scary child films, which were (usually) slightly less melodramatic and apocalyptic than the ‘70s mint. Neill, especially, is perfectly cast – particularly for the scene in which he drives his hands into a Crown of Thorns and prayerfully beseeches his Satanic Father to fill the world with “the grandeur of melancholy, the divinity of loneliness, the purity of evil … the paradise of pain!” They just don’t write incisive film dialogue like that anymore. MORE Baker: Alien Nation © Adrian Martin 2 October 1991 |
