The Final Conflict (1981) - film review

The world is in the grip of recession and tensions in the Middle East are rising amidst a diplomatic crisis.  One man can lead the way forwards, guiding mankind to a better future.  Unfortunately, he happens to be the son of the Devil.  Damien Thorn, 32, is the man in question, and he is now fully aware of his unholy destiny to bring his father’s gift of darkness and pain to all mankind.  But no sooner has he been appointed U.S. ambassador to Great Britain than he realises that Christ has been born again, somewhere in England.  Undeterred, he sends his evil minions out to murder all the baby boys born on the night in question whilst he pursues an affair with a TV journalist, Kate Reynolds.  Damien manages to evade a number of assassination attempts from his Christ-loving opponents, but his powers are on the wane...

The promise of the original Omen film is spectacularly unfulfilled in its second sequel, which is so short on ideas that it feels like a virtual replay of the second film, Damien (1978).  Offering few visceral thrills and visibly struggling to maintain its lethargic pace through to its dismal ending, The Final Conflict barely passes muster as a horror film by today’s standards and looks more like a misfired black comedy.  Graham Baker’s direction is as bland and uninspired as Andrew Birkin’s screenplay, and the performances are mildly hysterical.  This one should really have been played for laughs and re-titled Carry On Damien. 

To be fair, there are a few sequences which chill the blood and tingle the spine, but these are too diluted (to almost homeopathic proportions) by the dross to do the film any good.  Sam Neill is too damn sympathetic to make the adult Damien anything more than a tragic antihero, whilst Rossano Brazzi is too damn silly with his camp foreign accent to be anything more than mildly irritating.  Judging by the abundance of continuity lapses, you would think the people who made this film had never seen the two preceding instalments.  Weren’t all seven daggers required to dispatch the evil one - and just what happened to the time-line? How is it possible that Damien aged 32 years in just ten elapsed years?  The real killer is the ending, which probably rates as the most botched denouement in the whole of human history.  Damien’s ultimate defeat is so unimaginative and badly executed it’s a wonder that cinemas did not suffer a a wave of popcorn-related chokings when the film was first seen.  Even the Devil deserves better than this.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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