Doomsday (2008) June 5, 2008
Posted by gproject in : Cinema, Recently Viewed , trackbackDirected by: Neil Marshall
I’ve never really been much of a horror fan, but I can’t quite pin down why. It could be the cliché-ridden nature of the genre, or maybe the fantastical subjects it often deals in. I do like action movies however, and you could easily level many of the same criticisms at those. Where I break from my prejudices is with a fantastic British horror movie from 2005 that used claustrophobic intensity to ramp up its wildly effective tension-filled scares. That movie was The Descent, and its director, British filmmaker Neil Marshall, recently made his return to the big screen with this fully-fuelled action romp. I only hoped he could bring the same credibility to an ever-plummeting genre.
The story starts in the present day as a deadly virus known as the ‘Reaper’ breaks out in Scotland, violently killing those who contract it. The Government builds a wall encompassing most of Scotland in order to contain the effects and even though it leads to a worldwide quarantine of the British Iles, it seems to work. Three decades pass when the virus suddenly resurfaces in the now over-populated London. With no other choice, those in charge send a group of trained personnel, lead by Eden Sinclair, to venture into the sealed-off region of Scotland in search of a cure. What they find inside is a group of rebellious savages, detached from the rest of the world for thirty years, who want nothing more than to hunt down the ‘outsiders’ and feast on their flesh.
Doomsday is many things - most of them other movies. So, it’s a little bit Resident Evil and a little bit 28 Days Later. There’s the 80’s dystopian savagery of George Miller’s Mad Max and the techno-revelry of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York. There’s even twangs of the ill-fated Aeon Flux in its central character, who keeps the tight-fitting black outfit alive and well. Not that the director is unaware of this - he even names two of his characters Miller and Carpenter in the most blatant nod to these influences. But having also written the script, this may well be a pre-emptive defence for Marshall, who knows these comparisons are bound to be picked up on.
Part of The Descent’s charm was the knowledge that it was made on a shoe string - reportedly they spent about £3.5 million which, even by the horror genre’s budget-friendly standards, is still a cut-price production, especially given the results. Now Marshall has been lavished with $30 million and that freedom might have spoiled him just a little. The cities of a broken civilisation are well crafted, as are the stunts and practical effects work which harkens back to 80’s genre classics before CGI was the crutch it has become today. What suffers is the story, which is merely a tortuous excuse to leap from one big sequence to the next, with very little sense of character or drive.
If money can’t buy you narrative quality, it can certainly buy you actors. Luckily, Marshall shuns the really big names in favour of a middle-market British cast. Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell provide the old stalwart element playing a special forces leader and misguided doctor, respectively. Rhona Mitra takes the lead, looking not unlike Kate Beckinsale in Underworld, 
and adequately holds a slightly uninteresting character, while Craig Conway gets to play the unstable punk villain of the piece, doing so with relentless vigour. There are more to mention, many of whom meet a brutal end as part of the invading task force, but nobody really plays a blinder, let down by some uninteresting dialogue and a focus on delivering thrills over substance.
Niel Marshall may well have wanted to reference his genre influences with this movie, but the biggest fault is that his film sticks so rigidly to the old formulas that it also inherits their flaws. Namely, a certain mindlessness to the plot and the assumption that as long as you are offering some exciting action stimulation that you don’t have to worry about the sci-fi dystopia going on around it. Doomsday isn’t all bad though, and it provides a good dose of visceral gore to go along with the film’s most entertaining sequences. It’s a long way from the ingenuity of The Descent, but at least it doesn’t make the mistake of trying to be something it’s not. The result is a British action movie that actually competes with the American big boys for solid popcorn fun - and maybe that’s a bigger achievement than we’re giving it credit for.
Comments»
I like the last comment there - it perhaps does successfully compete with some bigger budget American movies and adopts some of the same dumbass approaches along the way, but maybe that’ll please the studios who like to play it safe when aiming for the masses and his future in Hollywood will be secured.
You may well be right - imdb lists his next project as ‘Drive’ for Universal Studios with Hugh Jackman currently attached. It would also be the first film he helms that he didn’t write, which you could argue suggests he has made enough of a name for himself to get offered these opportunities, or alternatively, that he’ll be less personally involved and that it will be rubbish.