aazell1-853-695525 Reviews

The Omen (1976)

Horror At Its Best!

[9/10 · 4 October 2010]

Ahh The Omen.. I have to say there are few horror movies that make me look over my shoulder while out on a dark night but this is one of them. It's just so damn creepy!

How is it that a Hollywood movie directed by the same guy who brought us Superman can touch such a raw nerve?

Having given this a lot of thought I have come to the conclusion that it's the overall feeling of impending doom that really chills us to the bone. We the audience are in on the plot. We know who Damien is. We also know that anyone who discovers the little cherub's secret is in serious trouble. From the moment they suspect something is up they are doomed to a grizzly random death.

All we can do is sit and helplessly watch as they meet their hapless end…

Add to this the utterly evil portrayal of the Nanny by Billie Whitelaw which is excellent. Polite but obstructive, protective to the point of sinister and ultimately a maniac with a kitchen knife she's utterly convincing. Towards the end of the film you get the impression that the nursery has become a sort of inner sanctum which Damien rarely leaves. Just crossing into the room feels threatening.

The other thing that makes The Omen so much fun is the adventure of discovery that Gregory Peck and David Warner go on. Having set up the "once you know you're dead" premise we then are kept on the edge of our seats as the guys travel to Italy and Israel to discover each element of Damien's heritage. We feel that evil is snapping at their heels every step of the way (literally in the grave yard scene)!

Having teetered on the edge of your seat for the last hour and a half, Donner and crew take us to breaking point as Peck returns to his home, hell bent on killing the impostor child that's destroyed his family. Jerry Goldsmiths score pounds your ears as Peck drags Damien up the church aisle toward the alter intending to send him back to the hell from which he came… and you're rooting for him all the way! Will he succeed? Won't he? Come on! Come on!

It's a fantastic movie experience and if you haven't seen it you've sorely missed out on a movie classic...

The Final Conflict (1981)

A Shameful Waste

[3/10 · 4 October 2010]

Recently Film4 in the UK ran all three Omen films on three consecutive nights. Having re-watched and enjoyed Omen 1 and 2, from which the combination of Jerry Goldsmiths score and creepy camera work left me pretty disturbed, I was looking forward to the third and final instalment which I hadn't seen before.

What a massive disappointment.

This film is a complete and total waste of so many good talents.

Sam Neill is pretty good as Damian Thorne. Sly, authoritative when necessary and pretty twisted in certain scenes. Check out the first scene in his satanic chapel as a perfect example of how the character should be played. Excellently done.

The problem here is that the basic premise of the Omen films has been thrown out of the window. I'll admit the writers here did have a challenge. They had to fulfil the prophecy elements stated in the earlier versions and somehow tie all that together with some sort of satisfying conclusion.

So many story points are present but have no bearing on the rest of the plot. Damian becomes the US ambassador to the UK like his (adopted) father before him. This seems to have been required in the story because it's stated in the earlier films that he will rise through the world of politics. Damian also becomes the head of the UN's children's program and this point is given a fair amount of attention at the beginning of the film but once again this comes to nothing in the story.

The prior two films set this story up and it's quite clear to me how the story was intended to progress. Why on earth didn't they follow this? The story as intended by Damian Omen 2 should run as follows...

Damian as head of Thorn Industries has bought up huge amounts of the worlds agricultural land and holds power over food distribution creating famine wherever he pleases. It's through this that he is able to bring the world into conflict and bring about the end of days.

Once again this plot point is mentioned at the beginning of the 3rd film but nothing ever comes of it. Such a frustrating waste.

The staple of The Omen films is the bizarre, random (sometimes overly complex) death scenes to those characters who threaten the antichrists ascension but once again this core element of the films is abandoned. This was the coolest signature of the films inspiring a feeling of dread in the viewer. You know they're screwed but you don't know when it's coming. The idea was taken forward by the Final Destination films with good effect. That's the fun part... and unfortunately it's missing.

Instead we have Rotweilers with hypo abilities (seen in the first film when the nanny hangs herself) and this is massively overused. The whole thing feels like a particularly bad episode of tales of the unexpected.

There is also a bizarre scene where Damian addresses his followers. The location is never disclosed and the followers appear to be a collection of Monty Python caricatures. Perhaps the most silly of these are the two boy scouts...

I found myself laughing out loud at some of the supposedly terrifying death scenes (especially the one at the BBC which is so silly you can't help but laugh).

In my opinion this film needs to be re-made to service the overall story with the ending it deserves. I want to watch each of the various strands of Damian Thorn's devilish plans slot into place perfectly as age of Satan draws closer by his design. Whether he fails or succeeds is irrelevant... We deserved a better ending than this!

Van Helsing (2004)

Appallingly Awful!!!

[1/10 · 24 September 2010]

Let's face it... here on IMDb people only enter reviews for films they truly love or truly hate. I can't see many people logging in to write a review of a film they found mildly entertaining. Well there may be some but they probably should get out a bit more.

In the case of Van Helsing I think I can honestly say that it's the film I love to hate. I feel it's so bad that it belongs up there with Batman & Robin as a possible contender for the worst film of all time.

Where to begin....

Almost the entire failure of this mess can be attributed to Stephen Sommer the director. When he directed the Mummy he was relatively unknown so the studio kept him on a tight leash and as a result we got a well balanced kind of Indianna Jones film with horror homages. It worked well and I thought it lots of fun.

Then I saw what Stephen was capable of when you take the leash off in The Mummy Returns. Dear god what a mess. Plot goes out the window, tonnes of cheap, lazy and pointless CGI comes in and characterisation is completely ignored. Sommer had become the king of CGI for the sake of it...

The film begins in black and white as an obvious homage to the classic horror films of Dracula and Frankenstein but it quickly becomes apparent that the huge CGI budget won't be used to any decent effect when you realise that the only alteration to the actual picture is that the colour has been removed. No CGI is used to give the black and white section a grainy or authentic look. You could get the same effect just turning down the colour on your TV.

Then we meet Dracula. He's awful. A caricature of the classic horror villain rather than an actual depiction. There's no threat to him, at all. He looks like he's just turned up at your parents Halloween party in a slightly expensive outfit.

Van Helsing himself is just Hugh Jackman playing Hugh Jackman in a Van Helsing costume.

David Whenham's sidekick is rather embarrassing to watch as the Aussie actor does his best to take on a comic English accent and has a go at slapstick (which he fails at miserably by the way).

Kate Beckensale is always easy on the eyes but aside from being a woman with a need for vengeance there's very little for her to do.

After a slightly odd battle between our hero's and a bunch of flying chicks in the local village things descend into the incomprehensible.

The story jerks along between one CGI set piece and the next and takes so many ridiculous turns that you give up trying to follow it after a while. Instead you sit back and let the CGI awfulness wash over you until you decide to turn it off.

The problem is that because no time is spent on any of the characters or the story, you just don't give a toss about what's happening on screen no matter how mind-boggling a stunt the CGI is trying its best to suggest.

Bottom line this film should have been a wonderful homage to the age of the classic horror movie. Each character, good and bad, should have been lovingly represented with the care and attention they deserved.

Instead each character is shoehorned in as an excuse to show more badly rendered CGI.

There's no love here, at all. It's just vacuous action with no point to it other than to make you say "wow look at all that CGI".

If you're the sort of person who complains about a film because there's too much talking in it then this may be for you.

The rest of us need to be aware that drivel like this actually exists and needs to be avoided at all costs.