Doomsday

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Horrorphile - October 2008

Doomsday

October 7th 2008 00:17

Writer/director Neil Marshall has dropped the ball. Dog Soldiers (2003) was a terrific werewolf movie, The Descent (2006) was a brilliant monster movie. Doomsday (2008) is a mess. It is a hotchpotch of too many other movies, features too many mediocre to poor performances, and has a dramatically flat ending. I can see now why the movie bombed overseas, which has dictated a straight-to-DVD release for down under.

Doomsday begins like 28 Days Later (2003), then starts to act like Aliens (1986), becomes Escape from New York (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1983), then shifts into Lord of the Rings meets Excalibur territory, before moving back into Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) mode, with the ending reminding me strangely of Army of Darkness.

Rhona Mitra as Eden Sinclair

To put it bluntly Doomsday is post-apocalyptic, medieval sci-fi, horror nonsense. Not even the presence of two respected actors can save it: Bob Hoskins slums it with a dreadful and thankless role, while Malcolm McDowell continues his slow slide as the A-list actor masquerading as a B-movie cameo queen.

Craig Conway as mohawked Sol expresses his rage

Rhona Mitra is an incredibly charismatic actor with spunk to spare, but she doesn’t get very good material to work with. It doesn’t help when you’re given a silly haircut and forced to fight a huge gladiator in a packed arena while “Caligula” looks on in bemusement.

Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Kane

Doomsday might have looked okay on paper, but it has died a death on the big screen. You just can’t take it seriously, and the movie doesn’t appear to be that tongue-in-cheek either. The bombastic score, with classic 80s tunes (Siouxsie and the Banshees, Fine Young Cannibals) thrown in, which only seem incongruous since the movie is set in 2035; the worst moment coming when Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes starts rattling out during the Road Warrior-styled car chase (which in itself is essentially an indulgent car ad for Bentley).

Bob Hoskins as Chief of Police

Basically the movie was ill-conceived. It’s extreme violence is the only thing that lifts it out of the ordinary, but even then it feels odd that a movie so over-produced, over-lit, so “Michael Bay”, you would assume the movie’s violence to be toned down so that more kids can see it. The production values are super-slick, but the dialogue is badly mixed with lines frequently inaudible; very frustrating for the viewer.

Lee-Ann Liebenberg as the striking Viper

So the plot then? A catastrophic influenza called the Reaper Virus wipes out most of Scotland, so the entire country is quarantined with a huge retainer wall built to keep in the infected. Survivors have managed to get out, and this makes England even more over-crowded than it already was. Thirty years pass and after a Reaper Virus re-lapse an elite team of mercenaries are sent into the disease-ravaged wastelands of the Scotland to attempt to find a cure. Head of the team is Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), who was separated from her mother during the movie’s chaotic prologue. Sinclair is tough and committed. She has the war-wounds, both psychological and physical to prove it.

Major Sinclair's team of mercenaries runs into a little trouble

The crack team encounters a group of violent misfits who rule derelict Glasgow. This gang lives like post-apocalyptic renegades, who’ve turned to cannibalism to stay alive and dress like New Wave punk-rockers. They are lead by the psychotic Sol (Craig Conway) and his hungry minions, including his lover, the buxom, tongue-flickin’, scene-stealin’ Viper (Lee-Ann Liebenberg). Far from the ruined city, in the countryside, is a long-abandoned tourist castle now commandeered by Sol’s father, Dr. Marcus Kane (Malcolm McDowell), a scientist who fancies himself as the king of the land.

An out of service bus acts as Sol's limousine

Sinclair and her team need to find Kane and get some kind of cure before it’s too late. The British Government has its own agenda and the P.M’s chief advisor, the ruthless Canaris (David O’Hara) is not afraid of collateral damage. Chief of Police (Bob Hoskins) is keen for Sinclair to get out in one piece.

Doomsday Lee-Ann Liebenberg and Rhona Mitra

Viper and Eden get to engage in a fencing duel

Doomsday stumbles and falls, picks itself up, then stumbles and falls again. The dialogue is frequently risible, and it tries to shock, but fails to create any palpable sense of anxiety or fear for Sinclair and her entourage. It only made me want to watch all the movies it shamelessly rips off. I’m sure director Marshall sees it all as a series of heartfelt tributes, but mixing and matching so many sub-genres and then trying to streamline them all into an action-chase flick does not work. It crashes and burns. And the final scene with Sinclair returning to the leaderless gang of “New Wave” barbarians in an odd surrender/stand-off situation welds no dramatic impact at all.

Hmmm, looks remarkably like a George Miller movie

I hope Neil Marshall recovers from this tremendous disappointment and comes back hard with a horror movie that utilizes a modest budget inventively and doesn’t attempt to be too clever or adventurous. Dog Soldiers and The Descent were both exemplary examples of horror movies on a modest budget that while pushing boundaries, still kept it relatively simple, and very effective.

Here's the trailer:

The best shot of the whole movie (I can be such a cynical sleazy bastard sometimes):

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

6 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Damo

October 8th 2008 07:15

For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics

As my kids would say: What a rip!

It looks like a Mad Max rip off.

Comment by Bryn

October 8th 2008 11:59

Horrorphile

Damo, well, yeah. But worse. It rips all sorts of movies and throws them into a blender.

Comment by Someone

October 19th 2008 08:33

Random Musings on Life, Love and Everything
Let's Get Down To Business

I really liked it. Not even kidding here. I think it wasn't meant to be taken that seriously, I got a few good laughs out of it. Granted it stole virtually every idea, but it was slick and the action was pretty cool.

As a serious horror movie, failed miserably. Funny moments though, I still reckon it's worth a watch.

Comment by Bryn

October 20th 2008 00:28

Horrorphile

It's worth a watch, I suppose, but it's nothing compared to The Descent or Dog Soldiers ... Was it really meant to be seen as tongue-in-cheek?? They played it so seriously though.

Comment by Someone

October 20th 2008 11:52

Random Musings on Life, Love and Everything
Let's Get Down To Business

I always thought 'return of the living dead' was AWFUL because I thought it was an abysmal Romero wannabe flick.

Then I watched it drunk one night and I realized, and now I adore it.

I don't know, since then I'm always keeping an open mind. Maybe this was meant to be tongue in cheek, maybe not, does it really matter? It's definitely a better movie if you don't take it seriously.

Comment by Bryn

October 21st 2008 05:17

Horrorphile

It's hard not to take a movie seriously when it appears the actors all are ...

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