Doomsday

30 years after closing the gates of a giant wall around Scotland to prevent a nasty and highly lethal virus to spread, the british government faces a new break out. Their only hope : a bunch of super cops are to go on the other side of the wall and make contact with the survivors who are believed to be immune therefore to have the antidote in their blood.
At this stage, you might be thinking you've heard this story a hundred times. Well... That's only because you have heard this story a hundred times !
Neil Marshall's first movies (Dog Soldiers and the Descent) were his own stuff. Even if inspired by horror classics, the man still managed to apply his own vision and tone; and it was good fun and quite scary as far as the descent was concerned.
Marshall was more than likely pushed hard to deliver Doomsday or, for that matter, "any movie" because, well, you know what they say... You've got to feed the monkey! So what do you do if you HAVE TO make a movie but no idea for the story? You borrow material. And there is a lot of borrowing in Doomsday, actually that's all there is...
The arrival in the post-apocalyptic Glasgow clearly takes from Aliens but is not quite as good. The first encounter with the overexcited and, it must be said, totally insane survivors wants to look like 28 weeks later but again, no luck there. The rest of the movie is a mix between Escape from LA (but without Snake Plissken) and Beyond Thunderdome (but without Tina Turner's legs)which says a lot about the overall quality. Because let's face it, when a movie can't match the not very high standards of Escape from LA and Beyond Thunderdome, it is a pretty poor performance.

First of all, someone will have to tell me why every time people survive an apocalypse they turn into insane punks with improbable hairdos and a huge amount of black eyeliner spending their time snarling, sticking out their tongue and obviously slaughtering any living thing in sight. The first half of the movie could have been almost scary if you weren't too busy laughing at the bad guys and their "Billy Idol like" leader. There is even a cameo of "the gimp" from Pulp Fiction... And I'm not going to mention the other "faction" seen in the second half because we're touching here the "mount Everest" of ridicule.

There is action in Doomsday, a lot of it. And gruesome, very gruesome. The scenes follow one another at lightning pace without any order or sense for that matter. And this is the other major problem here. The plot doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We're briefly given material that could be used to build a decent storyline but all of it shoved aside immediately and never mentioned again. Same thing for the characterization. So basically, a lot of people are killed in truly atrocious fashion but we don't care because they mean absolutely nothing to us.
I don't want to go too hard on the actors since all they're ask to do is scream (in pain or rage depending on whether they're good guys or bad guys) and jump around to dodge bullets, blades, cars, explosions and... cows. Rhona Mitra (see picture above) has a good "Underworld thing" going on here and she looks very sexy. That doesn't do anything to improve the quality of the movie but it's always a bonus.
Bob Hoskins, is once more lost in a crap movie but we're getting used to it.

In the end, if you like action and blood, Doomsday might just about do it for you but bear in mind that there is way better out there. Between the price of the ticket, the popcorn, the drink and whatever else you need to be comfortable in a cinema you'll more than likely spend 20 euros. Well, for that price, you can rent out Aliens, 28 days/weeks later, Escape from New York and Mad Max. Doomsday is nowhere near any of these.

1/5