Movies & TV The Omen Omen III: The Final Conflict Ended Armageddon With a Whimper Starring a young Sam Neill, the third Omen film had the chance to be something special… and whiffed it. By Don Kaye | Published on March 31, 2026 Image: 20th Century Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Image: 20th Century Studios Produced for under $3 million, starring Gregory Peck and directed by a then-unknown Richard Donner, The Omen was one of the seminal horror hits of the 1970s. Riding on the coattails of films like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, as well as the bogus end-times prophecies of authors like Hal Lindsey and the burgeoning Satanic Panic hysteria, the 1976 film about the birth of the Antichrist into a wealthy political family was a tremendous hit, earning a then-staggering $61 million at the worldwide box office. Critics at the time were cool to the film, but over the years The Omen has been reappraised as one of the more effective Hollywood horror thrillers of its era. Its success led, of course, to a sequel, and in 1978 Damien: Omen II—in which a teenaged Antichrist discovers his true identity and begins to embrace it—was released to an even harsher critical reception and less turnout at the box office, although its $46 million gross (on a budget of under $7 million) was enough to convince 20th Century Fox to move forward with a third film, titled The Final Conflict (later renamed Omen III: The Final Conflict for home video release). The Final Conflict, directed by Graham Baker and starring a young Sam Neill as the now-adult Damien Thorn, was released in 1981 and billed—as its title implied—as the concluding chapter in the Omen story: Damien would complete his rise and the world would fall under his thumb unless he was stopped by the forces of good (or, in this case, the second coming of Christ). Yet the film earned even less money—just over $20 million—and the critics were especially negative this time out, presumably putting an end to the series. Producer Harvey Bernhard, the driving force behind the Omen movies, had initially envisioned a franchise that could yield as many as seven films. David Seltzer, who had penned the screenplay for the original Omen, said that while he had no interest in writing any more of the movies, he would have provided—if asked—a bible laying out ideas for another six films. But then Bernhard decided to cap the series at three movies: “We had to kill [Damien] sometime,” Bernhard says in the documentary 666: The Omen Revealed. “He had to die.” Both The Omen and Damien: Omen II focused on a then-novel question: what if the Antichrist, only a child and unaware of his destiny, was placed into an environment—aided by helpful Satanists who manipulate themselves into key positions around him—by which he could prosper and eventually find himself holding the levers of political and economic power? And what if his unseen father assisted in clearing the path for him by cleverly killing off anyone who stood in his way through a series of bizarre, “coincidental” accidents? This was all supposed to be part of a Biblical prophecy, found (according to the story’s mythology) in the last chapter of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation. The Antichrist would garner immense worldwide power as he readied himself for a final, apocalyptic battle with a resurrected Jesus Christ, with their confrontation either ending the world or cleansing it of evil once and for all. So one might have reasonably expected The Final Conflict to follow through with an epic, climactic clash between the devil’s son and his opposite number. But that didn’t happen, and the series ended on a desultory note in an abandoned church, rather than on the plain of Megiddo with the armies of God and Satan facing each other. As the film opens, a 32-year-old Damien is consolidating his power: he’s now head of his family corporation, Thorn Industries, which controls the production and distribution of much of the world’s food supply. He’s also just been appointed U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, the same post his father Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) held in the first movie, following the mysterious suicide of the previous ambassador. His financial, global, and political leverage steadily growing, Damien is nonetheless haunted by signs that the second coming of Christ is imminent. Meanwhile, seven priests, each armed with one of the Seven Deadly Daggers of Megiddo (the only weapons that can destroy Damien), make multiple attempts to assassinate him, each ending with a priest’s gruesome demise. As it becomes clear that Christ has been reborn somewhere in England, Damien musters his worldwide legion of followers—including a young boy whose journalist mother (Lisa Harrow) he’s become romantically involved with—to kill every male child born in the U.K. on the date of Christ’s rebirth, thus preventing him from ending Damien’s reign. The first two Omen films are best remembered now for their elaborate death sequences, a gimmick later picked up by the Final Destination films. Every time someone gets close to discovering the truth about Damien, or alerting his adopted family to that truth, they get killed in an inexplicable “accident.” The first entry was famous for its stunning decapitation of a photographer played by David Warner and the impalement of a priest portrayed by one-time Doctor Who star Patrick Troughton, while the second movie featured a doctor sliced in half by an elevator cable and Lew Ayres drowning horribly under a frozen lake, among 10 or 11 others. Halfway through the second movie, one of Satan’s minions notifies 12-year-old Damien (Jonathan Scott Taylor) of his actual lineage, a burden he first rejects but eventually comes to accept. Therein lies one of the main problems with The Final Conflict: the first film focused on the mystery of Damien’s birth, the second on whether he would come to terms with his identity, with initially disbelieving protagonists like Gregory Peck and William Holden eventually realizing he must be destroyed. In the third film, Damien is ostensibly the protagonist himself—a plot point that execs at 20th Century Fox took issue with. “Fox said, ‘We realized that Damien is the hero of the piece,’” recalls The Final Conflict screenwriter Andrew Birkin in the Omen Revealed doc. “’We don’t know if that can work.’” Birkin’s solution was to beef up the role of Father DeCarlo (Rossano Brazzi), the leader of the Christian hit squad that’s out to nail Damien with the Seven Deadly Daggers. This also provided the film with the opportunity to stage more of the deaths that the series was famous for, although by the third film, the macabre set pieces had lost much of their impact and inspiration—and didn’t really fit comfortably into the occult/political thriller that Birkin had penned (it doesn’t help that DeCarlo’s team is inept and outmatched every step of the way). Even thornier (no pun intended) was the third act scenario in which Damien orders the murder of all newborn male babies in the U.K. to stop one of them from growing up to be Jesus. In an increasingly unpleasant montage, five of the killings (out of what is supposed to be a total of 31) are featured—although the filmmakers did not go as far as to show them in graphic detail. One—involving the child of one of Damien’s own henchmen (Don Gordon)—is so strangely staged (the mother has a vision of the baby as a mummy) that it almost evokes laughter. But The Final Conflict’s most disappointing aspect is that the title bout never actually happens. In the film, the “Christ child” is safely hidden away by Father DeCarlo, who then works with Harrow’s Kate Reynolds to lure Damien to an abandoned church, where Kate can snatch her son back from the influence of the Antichrist and Father DeCarlo can stick a Deadly Dagger into him. Unfortunately, Kate’s son takes the knife instead, but Kate manages to retrieve it and stab Damien herself. He dies as a glowing image of Christ appears amidst the ruins of the church. “You have won… nothing,” Damien snarls at his nemesis as he collapses, with Biblical verses filling the screen and the music turning from ominous to triumphant. I remember seeing this for the first time and thinking, “That’s it?” Making Damien himself the protagonist—although that’s quite different from the “hero”—gave the film a weird, off-balance structure to begin with, but then building him up only to kill him off in a ruined church, with a hologram of the adult Christ (still just a newborn at this point) projected above him, was a far cry from the apocalyptic battles, suffering of millions, and ultimate face-off between Christ and the Antichrist that the series’ prophecy foretold. Of course, with a relatively modest budget of $6 million or so, an actual “final conflict” between the armies of good and evil was almost certainly never going to happen onscreen. In fact, 20th Century Fox—which was going through some management upheavals at the time—refused to pay for Sam Neill’s airfare when he flew to England to audition for the role of Damien. His mentor, famed actor James Mason, covered the cost himself to help his young protégé (although Mason was apparently reimbursed). That alone perhaps says a lot about what the studio was willing to invest in the franchise at that point. As for Sam Neill, appearing here after his breakout role in My Brilliant Career, you can almost visibly see him struggling to find the right tone for the part. At times he’s quite good: on a one-to-one basis, he can be charming, calculating, even seductive—qualities that the Antichrist might in fact deploy in order to convert people to his cause. Neill has several chilling moments as well, but in the several monologues he is given (often performed in a secret lair where he keeps a statue of Christ crucified backwards), he sounds less terrifying and more like he’s just hectoring. Part of the problem stems from what I noted earlier: is Damien supposed to be the protagonist? Are we supposed to empathize with him? And if not, who? Overall, Neill has enough natural presence to make him watchable, while the rest of the cast is largely unmemorable. The movie’s other strong points? Graham Baker, directing his second feature film after coming up with the likes of Ridley Scott in the world of commercials, makes much of this film perhaps the most visually impressive of the series. And Jerry Goldsmith’s score—don’t forget, he won an Oscar for the first film—remains as haunting and portentous as ever. But even if The Final Conflict had a bigger budget and the full resources of the studio behind it, portraying this ultimate Biblical battle between good and evil in truly spectacular fashion might be a difficult feat to pull off. May I present as evidence the Left Behind movies, based on a series of violent novels co-authored by evangelical minister Tim LaHaye and writer Jerry B. Jenkins. The books chronicle everything the Omen films only hinted at, including the Great Tribulation, the establishment of a new world order under the Antichrist (sending the world’s Christians into hiding), the Rapture, and the final victory of a reborn Jesus Christ. The books led to the production of five films, of which only two were released in theaters (the rest went directly to home video): 2000’s Left Behind: The Movie, starring Kirk Cameron, and 2014’s Left Behind, with Nicolas Cage headlining. The movies were slammed by critics (both secular and Christian, it should be noted) and audiences for their shoddy production values, cheap visuals, bad acting, and incoherent scripting. Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios) has tried to wring a few more bucks out of The Omen with only varying degrees of success. The universally panned TV movie Omen IV: The Awakening premiered on the Fox network in May 1991. Some 15 years later, the studio tried again with The Omen, a direct remake of the original film that critics called inert and pointless, although it was blessed with a worldwide gross of $120 million. Next, the more positively received 2024 prequel The First Omen ended where the original movie begins, seemingly bringing the series full circle. Perhaps the studio will one day take a chance on The Final Conflict again—and this time give Armageddon the treatment it deserves.[end-mark] The post <i>Omen III: The Final Conflict</i> Ended Armageddon With a Whimper appeared first on Reactor.