Review: Doomsday
Year: 2008
Country: UK
This is a list of films that had, in some way, an influence on Neil Marshall when writing and directing his 2008 homage to post-apocalyptic science fiction films, Doomsday. Whether or not he was aware of it is anyone’s guess:
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Land of the Dead
Judge Dredd
Waterworld
Alien vs Predator
Gladiator
Resident Evil
Dog Soldiers
Only two of the aforementioned films are included in Marshall’s own list of influences. On this subject Marshall had this to say: “Right from the start, I wanted my film to be a homage to these sorts of movies, and deliberately so. I wanted to make a movie for a new generation of audience that hadn’t seen those movies in the cinema—hadn’t seen them at all maybe—and to give them the same thrill that I got from watching them. But kind of contemporize it, pump up the action and the blood and guts.”2
So clearly Marshall intended this film to lack anything that resembles originality. This is fine by me; originality is not a requisite for a good film and I laud his honesty in stating outright what his intentions are. However, while depicting influence in your own films is never a bad thing, it certainly doesn’t do you any favors when roughly 80% of the film, a statistic I did not just pull out of my ass, is comprised of specific and easily identifiable elements from a wide range of other films.
The plot is generic and, as was noted above, a hodgepodge of other films far superior. Roughly thirty years after a virus ravaged much of Scotland resulting in it being walled off and abandoned, the virus has returned. Thanks to high-tech surveillance, living humans have been found within the walls and it’s up to Major Eden Sinclair and her ragbag team of elite commandos to go behind the walls and find the cure before the virus spreads among the population of London and decimates the city. Hilarity in the form of over-the-top acting and Rhona Mitra’s lack of emotion ensue.
The beginning of the film called to mind both Resident Evil and 28 Days Later in terms of not only style but substance, and given both this and the words out of Marshall’s own mouth, it’s clear he was trying to not only pay homage to classic apocalyptic films, but the newer ones as well. Later on we’re treated to Waterworld and Gladiator, 2008 Edition. Unfortunately, the myriad of influences did little draw my interest, as the film is incredibly disjointed, and manages to shift gears so suddenly and at such inopportune times, that one wonders whether or not it’s actually Neil Marshall behind the lens. It starts off headed in one direction and at one point manages to find a way to become the newest incarnation of The Fast and the Furious, though thankfully without Paul Walker around to fuck anything up; we have Rhona Mitra to do that for us.
He also has said that, “I do think it’s going to divide audiences… I just want them to be thrilled and enthralled. I want them to be overwhelmed by the imagery they’ve seen. And go back and see it again.”1 Unfortunately – and I say this with a heavy heart, as Dog Soldiers and The Descent are two of my favorite films – I was underwhelmed and have absolutely no desire to see this film again.
Of course, it wasn’t all bad, as Marshall has a masterful eye for gore and manages to do a few things that were both innovative and downright hysterical, the latter of which culminating in a decapitated head flying right into the camera with a brilliant look on its face. Spoon from Dog Soldiers was in it, and I thought he was the best part of the film after MyAnna Buring, who’s just cute as a button. In the end, however, the movie was stale, relatively annoying, and a severely disappointing outing for a director who has come to be known as one of the best in the horror business today.
1 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/doomsday/news/1726180/neil_marshalls_10_post_apocalyptic_picks
2 http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/13/entertainment/et-doomsday13
