Great Film overall

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Best movie of this year hands down!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This sub-standard entry in the OMEN series is not as good as the first three films but not especially bad for a television movie, considering the horrors that followed it in the '90s. It plays and looks just like one of the earlier films in the series except this time the strange deaths are diluted and lacking in gore and the plot events are rehashed instead of being fresh and original. The somewhat clichéd spin on the tale was to have a gender-reversal, making the Antichrist a young girl and her mother the one who realises the truth (instead of the boy and his father Gregory Peck in the first film). But what happens? Well, by the end of the film there's a second child, a boy who turns out to be the real Antichrist, so goodness knows who the girl is supposed to be. It all gets very confusing and difficult to care about really.The plot is predictable and clichéd, pandering to the lowest common denominator and there's absolutely nothing new to be surprised about. Once again a series of strange deaths take priority and the resulting set-pieces are some of the best moments in the film. Things get fiery during a "psychic fair" involving lots of burning stuntmen, which is pretty funny, and there are some messy antics involving killer snakes to enjoy. Even David Warner's decapitation is rehashed from the first film, except the guy is in a car this time, but the resulting slow-motion head-lopping is still pretty nasty all things considered. Bizarrely, no mention is made of this horrific death - despite multiple witnesses - later on in the film! Occasionally black-outs and jump-cuts give evidence of post-production cutting but sadly even that failed to make a decent film out of this.Production values are fairly good for a television movie, with a passable budget allowing for some fairly good effects work. Sadly, the same can't be said of the acting, which is on the sub-standard side. Child actress Asia Vieira plays Delia, the Devil's child, this time around and is fairly ineffectual in the role and an unmemorable menace. Lots of blank stares don't make for a threatening character in my opinion. Faye Grant plays her mother and does the woman-in-peril thing, overacting occasionally but not being too bad. The same can't be said of Michael Woods as the father - after watching this film and THE UNBORN within in a week, I'm starting to wonder what happened to actors playing father figures in child-orientated horror films, as they never come across looking anything less than wooden. By far the best thing in the film is character actor Michael Lerner playing private investigator Earl Knight, who does some fairly heroic acts and has a great hallucination scene in which he sees holy things turning evil all around him - a solid performance that's a highlight of the film.Unfortunately, aside from Lerner, there isn't much to get worked up about. The familiar music is effective but overused badly at inopportune moments and the thrills and chills are diluted instead of being horrific. Even the ending is a predictable rip-off of THE OMEN. Devoid of suspense, thrills, chills and horror, and with only a little mild gore to recommend it, this entry in the series is a real let-down and one to be avoided, unless you happen to catch it on a lazy night on television. Whatever you do, don't spend money to see this as its distinctly average!

After adopting a girl from an orphanage, a woman soon comes to believe something's wrong with her daughter and when a slew of accidents finally has her convinced she tries to stop her demented plans.This was a decent enough if slightly flawed effort in the series. One of the few surprising parts to this one is the rather enjoyable pacing that manages to really make this more entertaining than it really should be as there's some really fun times to be had here. The relentless pacing used to build up how she's not quite right, from the clawing and constant screaming around every other adult to the reactions at the horse show and how she starts at others to unnerve them into falling for her evil plans makes this whole first half quite fun by really enhancing how vicious she really is, providing this with a great set-up which allows this an incredibly fast and frantic pace. That makes the later action scenes from the parking-lot encounter and the trouble at the fairgrounds when it all foes up in flames seem not only like fun spectacle scenes as well as being completely logical in the course of the film given all the logical build-up it's already done. These scenes in the later half don't have the same impact as the build-up has already set this up and instead rely more on spectacle where the attack in the revival tent or the construction-yard mishap which really helps to make for grander set-ups than the others in the film. This helps to overcome the few notable flaws in here, from the film really offering way too many of the same scenes here being the main one to get over. It consists way too often of having her simply stare at someone and then something happens to them, and now nobody realizes this as she's always at the center of the controversy makes no sense as for how that would be possible. As well, this one really can't escape the fact that this feels so much like the original with a gender swap that follows so many plot- points, themes and ideas form the first one that the film really carries itself in that factor. That is the biggest elements working against and holding this one down.Rated Unrated/R: Violence and violence towards children.

Faye Grant & Michael Woods play Karen and Gene York, two successful attorneys who adopt a baby girl named Delia. Years later, as sinister occurrences and mysterious deaths mount in Delia's path, the Yorks become concerned that something is not right with their daughter, especially Karen, who hires a private investigator to uncover the truth, though they'll come to wish they hadn't...The epitome of the pointless, needless, unnecessary, and ineffectual sequel, this film is truly awful, even worse than Part III, which was bad enough. Plot is identical to the first, only this one is inept and unintentionally funny(the Michael Lerner detective seems lifted from a comedy, which the choral music around him indicates!) Only watched it because it was included in the DVD set. This stinker is best ignored.

I was fully expecting this made for TV sequel to suck, and in that respect, I was not disappointed: this cheaply made, badly written, poorly acted piece of excrement is tantamount to blasphemy for fans of the Omen series, being devoid of the foreboding atmosphere of the other films, totally bereft of creative kills, and completely lacking in scares. Instead, we get silly shenanigans with new age mystics, an ugly kid sorely in need of a good orthodontist, a score that sounds like it should be accompanying a troupe of circus clowns, as-subtle-as-a-brick images of inverted crosses ad nauseum, and, worst of all, Satanic carol singers.I have seen it suggested that The Awakening might be an intentionally awful film in an attempt to parody the solemnity of the original trilogy; I highly doubt this, but if this should somehow prove to be be true, then shame on everyone involved for treating the franchise and its fans with such disrespect.If there is a Hell, then the makers of this rot will certainly have a special place reserved for them somewhere between the eighth and ninth circles (where the fraudulent and treacherous are punished): a sulphuric screening room in which they will be forced to watch their own abomination for all eternity (whilst having broken copies of the DVD roughly inserted up their rectum). Yes.... Omen IV: The Awakening really is that bad.