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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 28.57%
Worth A Look: 28.57%
Average: 3.17%
Pretty Bad: 17.46%
Total Crap: 22.22%
5 reviews, 33 user ratings
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| Doomsday (2008) |
by William Goss
"Don't Fear The Reaper"
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In a day and age where Hollywood seems to champion the unoriginal thought above all others, it doesn’t seem terribly fair to dismiss the genre pastiche that is 'Doomsday' as any sort of mere knock-off of ‘80s post-apocalyptic actioners.Yes, writer-director Neil Marshall’s follow-up to his harrowing-as-hell The Descent plays like the greatest hits of that particular subgenre – a hearty blend of Escape from New York and The Road Warrior, with some Aliens and Knightriders sprinkled in for good measure – but when Marshall goes so far as to name characters after Escape and Warrior directors John Carpenter and George Miller, not to mention replicate the very opening credits typeface and synthesized score of Carpenter’s work, Doomsday feels more like an open love letter to their work rather than a bald-faced cut-and-paste job.
Anyway, let’s take a moment to set the scene: in the year 2033, twenty-five years after an outbreak of the Reaper Virus has resulted in a Scotland completely sealed off from the rest of the world, this nasty little bug has managed to resurface amidst the overpopulated ghetto of Central London. As such, the desperate British government – run by shady authority figure Canaris (David O’Hara) – finally sees fit to dispatch a team led by no-nonsense agent Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) into the former hot zone and after a potential cure before the crisis grows out of control, and soon enough, our heroine and her crack team find themselves running afoul of survivors galore, most of whom have regressed into cannibalistic punks or medieval serfs, respectively ruled by the psychotic Sol (Craig Conway) and the megalomaniacal Kane (Malcolm McDowell).
Admittedly, it sounds like a messy mish-mash of archetypes and atmospheres, but Marshall keeps matters barreling forward before the whole bloody affair can begin to topple under the patchwork nature of its influences (not to mention a logical leap or two); it’s his competent and capable direction that raises the visceral matinee thrills here above the likes of, say, that most recent of Resident Evil efforts. Social order may have decayed with the corpses, as Kane explains in an opening voice-over, but Marshall does weave a certain degree of rhyme and reason amidst all this anarchy in the UK (my favorite touch: the length of chain that the cannibals use to cook themselves up some intruders is marked “Rare-Med-Krispy”).
Of course, all the level-headed direction in the world doesn’t count for crap if the performances aren’t up to par. However, Mitra struts, swings, and shoots with a steely glare all too befitting of a Little Miss Plisskin; Conway consistently operates on just the right level of batshit crazy; and McDowell’s natural gravitas only reinforces the constantly dire nature of the circumstances. Meanwhile, as Sinclair’s mentor and Britain’s prime minister, Bob Hoskins and Alexander Siddig respectively make the most of their comparatively modest screen time.Cap it all off with a rousing score by Tyler Bates and what is arguably the most exciting car chase this side of a Jason Bourne outing, and I wouldn’t hesitate to consider 'Doomsday' a pulpy throwback of the slickest order. One character remarks on their state of affairs as “same shit, different era,” to which I say: but what shit!
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=17031&reviewer=409
originally posted: 03/19/08 16:19:02
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USA
14-Mar-2008 (R)
DVD: 29-Jul-2008
UK
09-May-2008
Australia
08-May-2008
![[trailer]](/images/icon/trailericon.gif) Trailer
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