This film was definitely made just to cash in on a film franchise and by the time any sequel gets to the fourth installment it gets pretty old. Omen IV is not a great film but its no worse than Amityville 4,Halloween 4,Elm St 4,Psycho 4,Jaws 4,Exorcist 4,Friday the 13th 4,or any other horror film that has made it to the fourth in a series and the acting was better than the acting in the 2006 remake of the omen and better than most horrific horror remakes that are usually just lame period! At least it tried to tell a different story but if fox wanted to make a fourth Omen I don't know why they didn't make Omen IV Armageddon 2000 which was a novel that was the true sequel to the final conflict

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!

Let's face it: the Omen series was crap. The first one was great but the next two were just bad with only some grisly death scenes to make them at all worth watching. Then a decade later they made this garbage, a made-for-TV attempt to reboot the series by replacing Damien with female Devil's spawn Delia. The acting is horrendous. All of the scary scenes are comically melodramatic. The first director wisely quit halfway through production. What was with that awful music score? Most of the music cues didn't even fit the tone of a horror movie. It was like Jonathan Scheffer didn't even watch the damn thing. Not that I can blame him! It's really a stinker. The best part was the completely stupid nun fight early on. Delia's not even creepy! She's actually kind of adorable.

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.