The Omega Code
“The Omega Code” was the first film I remember getting serious traction with evangelical moviegoers, and being marketed primarily towards them. That it barely doubled its budget feels more like an indictment on its quality as it is how well Trinity Broadcast Network, which financed the film, marketed the film to the faithful. The first “Left Behind” film with Kirk Cameron would do something similar the next year, and it would go on like that before “The Passion of the Christ” opened the floodgates. Now, faith-based cinema is a niche market in the same way horror cinema is; like horror, the faithful are inundated as much with empty calories as they are with genuinely good movies. “The Omega Code” was the beginning of this new era in catering to people of faith. They should have asked for their money back.
This was the first time I’d watched “The Omega Code” since the early 2000s, and time has not been kind to it in terms of filmmaking quality, and the story borders on the absurd. The film, written by Stephan Blinn and Hollis Barton, centers around a media mogul known for his humanitarian work (Stone Alexander, played by Michael York sounding awfully similar to James Mason) who is attempting to bring about world peace in the Middle East, and enlists not just a motivational speaker with an affinity for hidden codes in the Old Testament (Dr. Gillen Lane, played by Casper Van Dien), but has also gotten his hands on a piece of software that decodes hidden prophecies in the Torah. That software had been designed by a rabbi named Rostenburg, who is killed for it in the beginning of the film. As we go on, it’s clear that Alexander’s motivations are not exactly for the betterment of mankind.
Just looking at it in terms of theme and narrative, I cannot help but feel like this film is a perfect representation of what we see in modern American evangelicals- after all, this is about people cherry-picking things from ancient religious texts to fit their belief system, which they think is how the world should be. Yes, the film begins to delve into the supernatural with a crazy twist in the second half of the movie, but ultimately, this is where the film’s head is, and it’s so on-point it could almost be considered a documentary. This is one of the most compelling parts of “The Omega Code,” along with the always-welcome presence of Michael Ironside as the assassin in the beginning (where he is dressed as a rabbi), while the rest goes on its low-rent, “Da Vinci Code”-lite millennium conspiracy way. Like “End of Days,” its use of religious ideas and iconography only has to due with a way to trying to stoke fear at the end of the millennium rather than larger points on issues of faith that film seems to try and instill when it comes to Van Dien’s Lane (including the bread-and-butter trope of a broken relationship for the hero, an evangelical film staple) before all but abandoning it most of the way through this film with thriller cliches that don’t work, under any circumstances. The film is all-but-forgotten (and honestly, deserves to be), but the market it helped build in movies is alive and well, and just as silly if you aren’t part of the crowd they are catering to.
