Movie Review - I Am Omega

I Am Awful! With a low budget look & a no name cast, I'll be honest that I didn't expect much from this film. It's a rip-off of The Omega Man and thats MUCH better. An odd start where a boy sees his mother killed, its hard to know if the guy rescues him or he becomes the guy we see later. Either way that guy (Richard) is haunted by ghosts of the dead and some monsters (the infected) seem to roam the Earth. There's no back story there, it just happened. Richard seems to go about his day filled with paranoia waiting for something to jump out at him & attack. His experience with the infected after the rabbit was a bad idea, Never show your monsters in broad daylight unless it's a killer make-up job. Which this wasn't.

Why he was planting explosives on a natural gas line also goes unexplained until much later, he's going to blow up the local city to wipe out a nest of the infected. (you think he'd want to keep infrastructure working for when civilisation restarts?). I'm guessing the makers were aiming at the Survival Horror genre here (like Resident Evil) and missed by a mile, mainly due to the low budget look and poor fight sequences/gore effects.

Richard is clearly a man bothered by hallucinations (the clock, the computer emails) and doesn't have much to do to fill his time but we get to watch him doing nothing. Quite a lot of nothing in fact. Which is very dull. Finally getting a message over his computer from someone who appears to not be infected (Rihanna) he decides not to help (she tells him about Antioch and sees he's not infected). He goes to set another bomb on the pipeline and is attacked, getting blood on him and ends up chasing another hallucination (btw, continuity goof with the blood on his hair). The following day 2 dudes turn up from Antioch asking if he wants to help them rescue the girl. They tell him she's got the anti-virus in her blood to interest him. He turns them down so they blow up his house with a rocket launcher (that's supposed to be an incentive?).

Anyway Vincent (the lead Antioch guy) gets attacked (and possibly bitten/infected?) and they head off to find Rihanna after a brief and very crap fight sequence that was over done and not required. We get an insight into the sewers and why their free of infected but guns can't be used there and they set off to & through the sewer. Obviously their attacked and use guns (so the infected clearly don't have problems in the sewers like we were told or they forgot that info really quickly?) and Micheal (the other Antioch guy) is killed.

After a brief overland dash on his own (he left Vincent in the sewer) Richard reaches Rihanna's position (she's not sat waiting for him? What gives?). After the rescue they both run across the city (Oxnard, it said so on the dumpster!) and we have their attempt to find a stick shift (manual gearbox to the non Americans) car which they don't do anyway. We also get some background history on Rihanna. Of course the car stalls as they reverse, allowing some infected to get close and for Richard to go Postal on them. She takes off without him leaving him in what seems like certain death until she saves him. Oh, and clearly there was no budget for a stuntman to be run over, the dummy was a very weak effect there.

Even though she's been told to drive fast they seem to cruise at about 2 miles an hour so we can ride along as they converse, but they still manage to crash over a very small earth ramp leaving them 4 hours to escape the city on foot to get away from the gas explosion. He ends up fireman carrying her (and she's obviously injured from the way she's crying and moaning over his shoulder). Fortunately Vincent arrives to ferry them away and she's put in the back of the van with Micheals dead body. The unarmed fight sequence here was pointless and unnecessary as they were supposed to be very short on time. Vincent shoots Richard 3 or 4 times in the legs & chest then reveals he & Micheal weren't from Antioch (no surprise) and has his little diatribe about how he doesn't want a cure because it'll mean going back to a bad old life because he's an Alpha Dog in this one.

Vincent leaves with Rihanna and lets Richard live because of his soldiers code. When I saw Richard pushing a car (twice!) I had to laugh (he's been shot and could barely walk hours ago!). I also couldn't decide if from his colour we were supposed to infer he was dying or was in the early stages of infection? Now I started to find myself questioning Vincent's motives. If he wanted Rihanna dead, why bother going to get Richard to help rescue her? They knew about the bombs, she'd have died without their help or assistance. That was answered when he decides to rape her before killing her. Richard's fight with Vincent has got to be one of THE most pointless things in the film. He's supposed to have been shot several times, almost mortally wounded! He'd be in no state to fight.

A fight which he of course wins and kills Vincent (no soldiers code from Richard then?). Of course they escape the huge (and very crap) explosion and apart from an awful and pointless attempt at a scare we're left with a very weak ending to a generally weak and awful film. Never trust anything where the screen writer casts themselves in the 2nd biggest role.