"Complete garbage?"  Nah.  I can get rid of garbage.  I bag it up, take it to the curb, and never again does it enter my mind.  “Giant, steaming pile of *@#$?”  Oh, no, no.  I can hose that off of my shoes.  This is worse.  Omen IV is to The Omen Trilogy what Galactica 1980 is to the original
Battlestar Galactica:  An ugly footnote.  A blatant attempt by its creators to cash in one last time.  It isn’t even good bad.

Any film that has nuns and babies is trouble.  All the Omen nuns had gone to seed.  Agnes of God dumped her baby in the trash.   Even in Elf it was a negligent nun that let poor baby Buddy wander into Santa’s bag (she was probably a touch dyslexic, and thought it said “Satan," not “Santa”).  So it was in a classically Catholic move that two nuns knowingly hand off an evil baby to an innocent couple (a move they no doubt learned from the priests’ handling of pedophiles).

Almost immediately Karen York (Faye Grant) has some misgivings about her new daughter, thanks to a nasty infection received from the infant Delia’s filthy cat box claws.  And she has good reason to have misgivings—unlike Damien Thorn, Delia is all kinds of trouble from the start.  The priest who baptizes her dies (now Grandpa Satan is on the case—years earlier he couldn’t be bothered with trivial things like “misplacing” his son’s jackal-licious bloodwork.  Now he’s all, like, smite-y.  “How dare you baptize my granddaughter!”).

As many, many have pointed out, there is no need for Omen IV, because it’s really just a reworking of The Omen (but with new age elements, a chunky gumshoe, and fetus papydopoulos or whatever it is).  When we finally settle into the present we meet Delia (Asia Vieira), who plays her character like a cross between a humorless Punky Brewster and Patty McCormack’s Bad Seed.  In fact, some of her dialogue seems to have been boosted from the 1956 film (The exchange: “You ask me and I say you don't even feel sorry for what happened to that little boy.” / “Why should I feel sorry? It was Claude Daigle got drowned, not me!”  mirrors Delia’s reaction when asked about the death of  a classmate’s father).  One could say the filmmakers did a lot of boosting—from their own film, from The Bad Seed, and from Rosemary’s Baby (the helpful family doctor is later revealed to be in on it, too, recalling Ralph Bellamy’s helpful Dr. Sapirstein).  “If you liked all of these films, you’ll love this one!” seems to be the logic.

One of my favorite (yes, that is sarcasm) differences between Omen IV and the original Omen is Delia’s relationship with the standard issue rottweiler.  In the original, he was unwelcome in the household and, if he had a name, we never heard it used.  Here he is Ryder, a beloved member of the York household.  The foreboding devil dog, remade as Alexandra Day’s Carl, the babysitter.

Delia is not the most popular kid at school (imagine that) and has attracted the attention of classroom thug Jerome (James Sherry).  She lacks the grace of Damien Thorn—you don’t get to walk around looking evil and imperious and then smack the crap out of someone with your little red lunch box.   When
Delia finally starts to use her psychic abilities she makes her version of Teddy do a weedle in his pants.  How far the mighty have fallen, huh?

Through it all, Delia’s increasingly odd and aggressive behavior is staunchly defended by her father, Gene (Michael Woods), who cuts the kid yards of slack due to his own childhood issues.  Even a stable full of horses figure Delia out faster than Gene.   With the relationship between Delia and Gene, Omen IV seems to again draw heavily on The Bad Seed, though in this case it is the original play, and not the ’56 film:  In the play, the mother kills herself (as does Karen) while the murderous child lives and is reunited with her adoring, oblivious father (in 1956 cinema, however, this just would not do, so the ending was changed).  This leaves the viewer with the feeling that not only did they have no idea of how to revive the Omen series in a fresh and interesting way, but they also might have been better suited simply making a more faithful adaptation of The Bad Seed instead.

Just when you think the film could not get any more stinky…  Just when you think, “Gosh, I do believe I’ve lost all sense of cinematic smell,”…  the film manages to roll over, die, and release all of its *unbeeeelievably* rank fluids.  Wow.  Smell that aroma.  What *is* that?

Well, it might be the former Sr. Yvonne, who now calls herself Felicity.  She’s chopped off all her hair (and you know how well that worked for the WB’s Felicity) and handles snakes for Jesus.

The final scene is, predictably, in a cemetery, where we see Gene holding Alexander, with Delia at his side.  At the end of the funeral he follows her like the big dumb dog that he is.  Honestly, I doubt even Ryder was so well-behaved.

Though Omen IV has no rating it is really not for small children, who have been taught that “poo-poo goes in the potty” and are therefore likely to flush the DVD.