Doomsday (2008) Reviews

• Doomsday

  brains-192008-04-14

  If you enjoyed 28 Days Later, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Gladiator, this might be the film for you. Writer and Director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) an obvious student of genre movies, has managed to smoothly craft together a cinematic Frankenstein's monster of sci-fi action clichés. Gratuitous blood geysers? Check. Insane, post-apocalyptic punks? Check. Buff, beautiful, uber-bad-ass heroine that can kill without a moment's hesitation but still possesses superior morals to those that command her? Check. Ego-maniacal bad guy played by Malcolm McDowell? Check. Ticking clock to doomsday? Check. Marshall has skillfully engineered what is truly an homage to the genre movie and an action buffet for moviegoers with appropriate kitsch and over-the-topness without lowering himself to the realm of spoof. If you're looking for high cinema don't look here, but if you're looking for excitement, humor and an overall really good time, Doomsday will certainly fit the bill.

• Awesome action flick. Very entertaining. Who cares for the plot.

  Fella_shibby2016-12-11

  I saw this with my dad in a theatre in 2008. As a fan of Neil Marshal, I enjoyed it. His Dog soldiers n The Descent r very good horror films. I found this flick to be a very entertaining n action packed. It was like Mad max on steroids. This movie is a pure adrenaline rush with lots of action and suspense, violence and gore. Its an over-the-top grindhouse epic. A homage to Mad max, Escape from New York, Death race, 28 days later. Awesome visual effects. The pacing is very good. Action n horror fans will not b disappointed. The gore was excellent n top notch. The action is superb, the car chase is excellent with lots of body count n superb camera work n loud music. Mitra is gorgeous, the cinematography is excellent. Pure action n entertainment at its best. Bought a DVD of it recently. Need to revisit. Need to check the hot babe Lee-Anne Liebenberg.

• Gonzo mix of Mad Max, Escape from NY and 28 Days Later

  angelynx-22008-03-22

  What an insane movie! I saw it in a criminally tiny Saturday afternoon audience (four people) and we all had a terrific time. Don't expect sense, great acting or original dialogue, just go for the kicks and enjoy. A totally deranged, over-the-top splatfest with hideous viral deaths galore, some of the best post-holocaust punk makeup and chase scenes since Road Warrior, brilliant use of 1980's dance music (Adam and the Ants, Frankie Goes to Hollywood--the placement of Siouxie and the Banshees' "Spellbound" and a Fine Young Cannibals track at the punk barbecue is simply inspired), a coliseum battle-to-the-death, a bizarre interlude in a Scottish fiefdom that feels as if the movie took a fast detour into the Shire, and the coolest star turn by a UK car since Harry Potter's posse made one fly. All of it snapping and crackling with so much kinetic energy and wild creative freedom that it's hugely exhilarating. We were still giggling like maniacs an hour after the movie.=) It's just such fun to see a director decide to go full-speed over the edge like this. It's not great art, but trust me, if you enjoyed Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Planet Terror, Escape from New York/L.A., and/or any recent zombie movie, you can't miss this one.

• Homage to the post-apocalyptic

  Cujo1082010-05-09

  It's April 2008, and a sudden viral outbreak has hit Scotland hard. To contain the deadly bug (dubbed the Reaper Virus), the British government works quickly to build a containment wall around the afflicted country. The possibility of the disease spreading to the rest of the world appears to have been effectively stopped in it's tracks. Fast forward 30 years and the virus has reappeared, this time in London. Satellite monitoring has picked up images of apparent survivors in the hot zone, which leads the government to suspect the potential for a cure. Desperate to put an end to the reborn plague, the Brits send a team of soldiers into the walled off country in the hopes that they can find the cure that may not even exist. The third feature film from British filmmaker Neil Marshall. I thought this was a fun time at the movies, but don't expect anything new here. Doomsday is a pure love letter to Escape From New York and the Italian post-nuke films of the 80's. There are homages all over this thing, and I would like to think that I caught most of them. Hell, even Nightmare City seemingly gets a nod with the look and behavior of the infected. Watch the scene where one of the infected axes his way into Hatcher's compound and see if Lenzi's trash classic doesn't come to mind. Marshall knew what he wanted to do with this film, and he does just that. I have to admit, it was somewhat surreal watching such a film on the big screen, particularly the extended Sol/feast scene, which gets pretty nutty. Rhona Mitra plays the team leader of the squad sent into the hot zone. She's a gorgeous woman with a killer accent, but she also comes through as a believable action star. I've long been a fan of her's, so it's nice seeing her get a role like this. Craig Conway is warped as the over-the-top Sol, but he lacks menace. He did get me to hate him, but that had more to do with the fact that I found him annoying. The considerable talents of Malcolm McDowell, Bob Hoskins and Alexander Siddig provide solid support despite what little they have to work with. My biggest gripe with the film is the wall to wall use of music. It seems like there's never a scene that doesn't have some form of music blaring, and that becomes tiresome. A little more subtlety in that area would have been most appreciated. Also, some of the scene transitions feel awkward, and the film itself feels quite rushed. We don't get much down time or quiet moments, it's all very busy. Still, I must admit that it's decent fun. Original? No. Flawed? You bet. That aside, if you have a certain affinity for this brand of entertainment, you should eat it up. And for the record, I'll take this one over The Descent any day. Mitra puts the wannabe badasses in that clunker to shame.

• 28 Years Later: Escape from LV-246

  MrGoodB2008-11-04

  Now this one is what you see when you look up "letdown" in a dictionary. It started out decent, even promising, with a suitably gloomy introduction that, while not exactly what I would call innovative, set the mood very nicely: in the near future, the fatal Reaper virus decimated Scotland and now threatens to makes all human life in the UK a thing of the past. Extreme conditions demand extreme responses, and so the government revives the time-honored British tradition of building humongous barriers across the country. Hadrian's Wall 2.0 is finally finished, the gates are welded shut, the automated sentry guns come online (much to the dismay of the local fauna), what's left of Scotland is sealed off from the rest of the world and everyone is happy. Problem solved, or is it? Of course, it's not, and three decades later, the virus rears its ugly head again, only this time in London. Understandably troubled, the government assembles an elite team of assorted badasses with security clearances, among them captivating police officer Eden (!) Sinclair and sends them over the wall to meet up with Dr. Kane (!!), who, according to recent satellite reconnaissance, might be alive after all and might even have the cure for the Reaper virus. This, unfortunately, is the turning point for the movie, which, in an eerie mirroring of the events unfolding on screen, veneers from hey-this-ain't-so-bad highway straight into dark, uncharted I-can't-believe-that-somebody-greenlighted-this territory. Let me explain: the group enters Scotland by means of two wheeled, heavily armored APC's, which, as we are explicitly told, were built to protect its passengers from each and every harm that might lurk on the Other Side (capitalized for dramatic effect). After running over a cow (those things can be tricky at night), the group exits the vehicles and searches an abandoned hospital for clues, while the operator stays put and watches their progress via helmet-mounted cameras on the APC's impressive array of screens. If that description vaguely reminded you of some other movie, you are absolutely right: the entire scene is lifted straight from "Aliens". The fear that "Doomsday" would merely turn into a bad copy of said movie was unfounded, however, because it quickly becomes apparent that "Doomsday" also aspires to become a bad copy of several other movies, including but not limited to the 28... Later and Mad Max series, Waterworld, Gladiator and Lord of the Rings. After getting attacked by a gang of mohawked punks straight from the "Escape from New York" set, the slightly shaken group flees into the soothing steel embrace of their nigh-indestructible tank things. Little good it does them, as these marvels of military technology are quickly destroyed by a combination of molotov cocktails, arrows and bricks (I couldn't make this up if I tried) in a chase scene again lifted directly from Aliens. The survivors are taken prisoner and we encounter a ragtag society of garishly dressed maniacs who burn alive and devour one of the captives while playing a Fine Young Cannibals tune (my, that's clever) in a scene that tries to be both scary and funny and fails to be either. Of course, the survivors MIRACULOUSLY manage to escape - on a steam train, waiting for them in a nearby station, no less. Don't ask. Wandering around the Highlands for a bit while not resembling the Fellowship of the Ring at all, they finally traverse a mountain range by means of a gigantic, underground storage bunker filled with mysterious and obviously completely untouched containers, crates and boxes. After getting kidnapped by some knights on horses, encountering the elusive Dr. Kane – who now rules a pseudo-medieval community based in a castle - and defeating his best fighter in a breathtaking and totally unexpected turn of events, the group escapes once again, re-enters the Warehouse of Moria, opens one of the millions of containers nobody ever bothered to look at twice in 30 years of passing through and finds – huzzah! - a shiny new Bentley Continental. The tiresome punks from Act I make their reappearance and give chase, only to be killed off in various unexciting ways by the strangely slow but completely indestructible Bentley. Well, whatever. I won't give away the ending, lest I spoil the surprise (ho, ho). 2/10 (one star for the first five minutes).