Tributes have been pouring in all morning for Sam Neill, the Ireland-born, New Zealand-bred actor whose death at age 78 was announced late on July 13. Most people immediately mentioned his turn as Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist hero of the Jurassic
Park movies; his reunion with his fellow I.P. O.G.s Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion was the highlight of that late-franchise entry. (It also gave us one hell of a raucous press tour.) Older fans referenced his early days in New Zealand and Australian cinema, notably his role in the landmark film Sleeping Dogs (1977) and his international breakout role in My Brilliant Career (1979). Some shouted out cult classics like Possession (1981), in which Neill provided the ballast that allowed his costar Isabelle Adjani the chance to dive headfirst off the deep end, or the Hitchcock-thriller-on-a-boat Dead Calm (1989). Others highlighted his turn as the title characters in the TV shows Reilly, Ace of Spies (1983) and Merlin (1998).
Neill played dashing heroes, sinister villains (see: The Piano), authority figures, famous figures, and father figures. He was this close to becoming the new James Bond in the Eighties, an opportunity he later admitted he’d been glad to miss out on. Neill seemed perfectly capable of lending his matinee-idol mug to both massive Hollywood blockbusters and modest down-under indies; the tenderness and gravitas he lent to a character like the crusty “uncle” in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Taika Waititi’s sleeper hit from 2016, was invaluable.
But the first role that sprang to mind after the shock of hearing that Neill — who’d been battling cancer since 2022 but was in remission when he died — was gone was not Jurassic Park‘s resident zaddy, or his memorable Russian submarine officer from The Hunt for Red October (1990), or the various pressurized husbands, protective dads, and extremely handsome everymen he played for over five decades onscreen. It was a highly unusual, yet extremely key part in a franchise that preyed on religious paranoia. Neill was a corporate CEO who had talked his way into an ambassadorship and a spot in a U.N. council, and had one eye on the presidency. He was also, not coincidentally, the antichrist.
By the time the creators of 1976’s The Omen and its equally popular 1978 sequel got around to dropping the last part of their trilogy, Neill was a bona fide movie star, the era of Satanic Panic was just starting to kick into high gear, and a former actor who’d courted the Religious Right now occupied the White House. The Final Conflict, a.k.a. Omen III (1981), reintroduces viewers to former-evil-child-turned-successful-business-tycoon Damien Thorn, who now heads up the multi-conglomerate Thorn Industries. He manages to start working his Beltway connections and ascend the political ladder, setting the stage for an eventual bid for greater power. Damien already has a legion of followers, who are more than willing to do his bidding and bring forth a new reign of evil. But he also has to contend with a gaggle of monks, some mystical daggers designed to stop the son of Satan, and the foretold second coming of Jesus Christ, who keeps derisively referring to as “the Nazarene.“
The Final Conflict is not what you’d technically call a very good movie. It’s not even a very good Omen movie, really — anyone expecting to see priests speared by falling cathedral spires or heads getting lopped off by plates of glass will be sorely disappointed. It’s vintage early Eighties religio-horror cheese. But, and this is an extremely big but: It allows Sam Neill to play a smooth-operator version of evil that let him weaponize his good looks and debonair leading-man charisma. At one point, Damien casually mentions that the POTUS, a personal friend of his, is about to call him with an offer to be the United States’ next ambassador to Britain. But what about the current ambassador to Britain, someone asks him. And Damien simply, slowly smiles, immediately telegraphing that little obstacles like someone already occupying the position will not be a problem for very long. (Spoiler: It isn’t.) That smile is both radiant and totally, utterly menacing. And, seeing that single facial expression, you find yourself going: Right. That is why you hire Sam Neill to play the Devil.
The Prince of Darkness will not descend upon humanity in the form of a horned, cloven-hoofed monstrosity. He will come back looking like a photogenic hunk with populist appeal and an ability to mesmerize the masses, all the better to fool people into thinking he’s their new messiah. Neill knows how to wear a suit well and project a sense of both natural born leadership and business-tycoon entitlement, giving you the feeling that the highest office in the land is simple his birthright. His Damien is a Master of the Universe with an understanding of how power is exercised. Even the film’s actual President is in thrall; when Damien mentions that an ambassadorship would require him to divest of his business holdings — “It’s against the law” — the commander-in-chief replies, “Then we’ll just have to bend it a little.” Sure, Mr. Thorn is the antichrist. But of course you’d totally vote for this guy if he was on a G.O.P. ticket!
Perhaps more importantly, Neill knows he’s acting in the middle of a pure cinematic Velveeta, and has a knack for knowing exactly when to play things straight and when to camp it up to the high heavens. Watch the following bit of blasphemous ballyhoo, in which Damien starts cooing the threats to a certain highly worshipped divine entity.
This is the sort of pure 1980s batshit monologue that prompts both oh-my-Lord gasps and howls of laughter, and Neill nails the whole thing. Lots of actors can make a meal out of a Shakespearean soliloquy. It takes someone of his caliber to thread the line here, and make you feel giddy watching it 40-plus years later. And while the idea of a politician using promises to beguile the public and mask sinister, extremely corrupt agendas sure plays differently now than it did even during the go-go Reagan years, Neill’s casual way of being the calm within this horror movie’s storm — then fluidly switching to being the raging storm itself — is timeless. (Even the whole antichrist thing is back in the news!)
There are more than a few scenes in The Final Conflict that require Neill to go big, and man, does he go big. Yet he also plays things subtly ironic and sly. You appreciate that he never acts like he’s above it all. Neill would have meatier roles in far better movies. None of them would be this devilishly good in something so ridiculously bad. That’s all Neill’s doing. There was nobody like him.
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