Timed, with typical precision by straight-to-Blockbuster genre outfit The Asylum, to cash in on Fox’s own 2006 cash-in remake of THE OMEN, 666 THE CHILD is shameless, cheap looking and jokey but, like some of The Asylum’s product, you end up unable to hate it. In fact, it’s quite fun : barely feature length (ten minutes of extra-slow end credits begin at the 70 minute mark), it’s broadly played by actors filling in for key OMEN personnel : a scowling nun has the Dire Warning Patrick Troughton role, though a separate hammy Irish character papers his walls like that film’s mad priest. It also has a heavily telegraphed bloody death every ten minutes or so.
The wonderfully named Boo Boo Stewart, who looks at least 13, is a shaggy haired anti-Christ named Donald. The 9 year old boy, who has a 666 birthmark on his tongue, mysteriously walks away from the wreckage of crashed Thanksgiving flight 7666. This particular incarnation of Satan’s spawn, in a novel touch, wants to rise to prominence via the entertainment business, having presumably taken note of the success of despicable Devil-phlegm like Crazy Frog and Paris Hilton. After a quick visit to an orphanage named His Lady Of The Blessed Blood, a TV anchorwoman (whose sister is a hugely popular media personality) adopts Donald and arterial-spraying “accidents” start happening.
While the pacing lags in between kills, this movie relishes the chance to contrive creatively gruesome deaths. A horny nurse is brained by a dislodged pipe, an unpleasant dentist has his eye gouged by one of his own drills and, in a show stopping gore-as-slapstick set piece, a hopeless schmuck becomes an instant amputee thanks to a runaway lawnmower, before falling on a live drill and copping a flying band saw (!) to the face. Talk about unfortunate…
The over the top deaths and almost satirically unlikable characters suggest no one was taking this too seriously. In a genuinely funny early-on dig at showbiz, an orphanage priest comments on the cynical, doomed heroine’s sister, referring to her as “The only performer, aside from Celine Dion, to carry moral responsibility in this perverse business”. The sister, a cheesy daytime host fond of garish Christmas sweaters and the host of “Homemaking With Mary Lou Conroy”, becomes Donald’s new guardian in a tongue in cheek final scene modelled on THE OMEN’s ominous fade out.
The film’s knockabout approach becomes evident as the dumb characters fail to see anything suspicious about the increasing volume of “accidents” and don’t pick up on the fact that Donald’s new Asian nanny is named “Lucy Fer”(!!). (This character speaks almost identical lines to Billie Whitelaw’s in the 1976 OMEN, but gets her tits out when the plot slows down). Stewart, whose devilish character is fond of childish drawings with lovely names like “Die Cocksucker” and “Fuck Face”, isn’t very frightening, but the movie overall is an amusing cheapie.
The Asylum produced a sequel,666 THE BEAST in late 2007.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
