Omen IV: The Awakening (1991) Review

Directors: Jorge Montesi, Dominique Othenin-Girard

Writers: Brian Taggert, Harvey Bernhard

Stars: Faye Grant, Michael Woods, Michael Lerner

Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes

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Synopsis

Michael and Karen York are adopting a baby girl. We see them go to the orphanage and drive away with their happy baby. There’s an unexpected eclipse that night, and the nuns at the orphanage fight to the death.

The new baby’s name is Delia, and at the baby’s baptism, the baby cries a lot, but doesn’t burst into flame or anything. The priest dies that night from an apparent heart attack.

A few years later, Gene decides to run for Congress and wins easily, now heading the Finance Committee. The nun from the orphanage still stalks Delia. A big black dog saves Delia’s life and they adopt him. A bully at school stomps on Delia’s lunch and she bites him. The next day, she climbs a dangerously-high ladder and dares him to follow, but he pees himself instead. The boy’s father threatens to cause trouble but is almost immediately beheaded by rear-ending a flatbed truck.

Delia goes to riding school, but she spooks all the horses. She goes to the hospital after falling from the horse. Dr. Hastings wants to do some tests…

Karen hires a nanny, Jo, to help. Jo is into the healing power of crystals, and Delia thinks that’s really stupid. At a touch, Delia turns all her crystals black. Jo sees an inverted cross in the mirror, and Michael thinks that’s a silly thing to worry about. Jo wants to take Delia to a psychic fair, and she freaks out all the psychics until the fair burns to the ground. Jo tells Karen that Delia is very powerful, which upsets her, but she’s not convinced. Jo takes a flying leap out of the upstairs window and stops being annoying.

Jo’s dead, but now Karen is pregnant. Karen continues to wonder about Delia’s “evil” nature, but Gene continues think it’s ridiculous. Karen goes to see a priest.

A couple of religious women stop by and drop off a Watchtower magazine. Delia opens the door, and it goes badly for them. Karen wants to find the nun from the orphanage. Karen hires a PI to find out more about Delia’s natural parents. The nun has changed her name and now runs a cult in North Carolina. They track down Felicity the nun, and she now walks through nests of poisonous snakes in the service. The detective is bitten and Felicity is killed by the snakes. The detective mails his evidence to Karen and then dies because he envisions an evil choir of singing zombies and is hit by a giant wrecking ball.

Karen has her baby, and she gets more and more afraid to be near Delia. She stabs Doctor Hastings and makes him tell about Damien and the antichrist. He explains that baby Alexander is somehow Delia’s twin brother with his fetus implanted in Karen. Karen kills the doctor, takes his gun, and goes after Delia. She kills the new nanny.

She points the gun at Alexander and/or Delia and can’t do it. She shoots herself instead. Oh, and the new baby has “666” in his hand. We end with Gene, the ambitious politician, Delia, and Alexander leaving the cemetery as the Latin chanting commences…

Commentary

This was actually a made-for-TV movie, and it has exactly the amount of sex and gore that you’d expect for a network TV shows in the 90s. It was intended as a pilot, and everything from the soundtrack to the dialogue just screams “TV show.” Basically, it’s “Evil Punky Brewster.” Even though a bunch of bad things happen, everything feels extremely watered-down and decidedly non-creepy. The wrecking ball scene would have been awesome with today’s modern special effects, but here it’s mostly left to the imagination.

Delia was intended to be the child of Damien and Kate from the Omen III. Damien was actually pretty innocent until he learned his identity in the second film, but Delia seems to have been born evil.

There was a scene when baby Delia disappeared, scaring her mother, just like Damien did in the Omen. There’s a scene where she spooks horses, just like in the Omen. There’a a scene when the Nanny goes for a flying leap, just like in the Omen. There’s a scene where Karen loses her unborn child, just like in the Omen.

It wasn’t terrible, but there was literally nothing new here. I guess as a TV reboot it wasn’t awful, but the audience at the time didn’t care for it either, so the series never happened.