DoomsDay

IMDb
A futuristic action thriller where a team of people work to prevent a disaster threatening the future of the human race.



Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

Three decades after a major country is quarantined in hopes of containing a lethal and highly contagious virus nicknamed "Reaper," signs that the super-bug has resurfaced in a major city prompt desperate specialists to race back into the infected zone to find a cure in director Neil Marshall's (The Descent) miasmic speculative sci-fi thriller. Few could have foreseen the terror that the microorganism known as "Reaper" would unleash upon the unsuspecting population, and when terrified authoritiesquarantined the entire country in hopes of saving the human race, the streets immediately descended into chaos. Thirty years later, the inhabitants of planet Earth think that they've seen the last of the merciless killer disease, but they couldn't be more wrong. When "Reaper" reappears more powerful than ever in a major city, an elite group of professionals led by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) are forced to travel back into the sealed-off country where the virus first broke out in order to create a cure and save humankind from certain doom. Now, as the rest of the world anxiously awaits word of their ultimate fate, Eden and her brave team are about to find out that there is indeed a hell, and they are about to journey directly into its black, envenomed heart. Also in the cast are Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell, as well as a host of veterans from Marshall's past productions, including Sean Pertwee, MyAnna Buring, Craig Conway, and Nora-Jane Noone. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

NYTimes

“If you’re hungry, here’s a piece of your friend,” snarls a jailer in the post-apocalyptic action picture “Doomsday,” sliding a plateful of charbroiled man-flesh to a captive.

If that line fails to make the film’s midnight-movie ambitions clear, the British writer and director Neil Marshall offers many other clues: hands, legs and heads lopped off in bloody close-ups; a nonstop soundtrack of adrenaline-stoking rock ’n’ roll; a shot of a cute little bunny blasted into rabbit stew by a remote-controlled sentry cannon.

“Doomsday” is set in the near future, years after the British government quarantined a plague-ravaged Scotland and let its inhabitants die out. The decision is believed to have killed the disease along with the Scottish population, but when it surfaces in London, officials reveal that a hardy band of Glasgow inhabitants survived the epidemic and might hold clues to a cure.

Enter the stoic, one-eyed mercenary Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra, of the television show “Nip/Tuck”), who is ostensibly entrusted with leading a team of soldiers into Glasgow on a mission to find a doctor-turned-political leader named Kane (Malcolm McDowell) and learn how the Glasgow contingent survived. Really, though, Eden is mainly on hand to impersonate another sci-fi hero, Snake Plissken from John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York,” and to punch, kick, run and shoot her way through situations shamelessly cribbed from Mr. Carpenter’s film, George Miller’s “Mad Max” trilogy, “Aliens” and other dystopian touchstones.

“Doomsday” has an appealing punk-rock sneer, but aside from a few clever music cues — including a Fine Young Cannibals song that accompanies a deranged bacchanal given by fine young cannibals — swagger is, unfortunately, its only notable quality.

The film’s bellowing, Mohawk-topped villain, Sol (Craig Conway), is a personality-free retread of Vernon Wells’s memorable Wez from “The Road Warrior.” Major supporting characters — including a squad leader, played by Adrian Lester, and a gruff yet caring boss, portrayed by Bob Hoskins — are so lifeless they could have been cast with inflatable dolls. The final chase, modeled on an epic set-piece from Mr. Miller’s second “Mad Max” movie, is likewise a bust, substituting gore, shaky camerawork and chop-chop editing for Mr. Miller’s symphonic build-up and release.

Mr. Marshall gained a cult following with his 2002 debut feature, “Dog Soldiers,” about British troops menaced by werewolves in the Scottish highlands, and acquired serious (and well-deserved) critical respect for his 2005 film, “The Descent,” about a group of female spelunkers who encounter terrifying creatures while exploring a network of caves.

In terms of story, “The Descent” and “Doomsday” are as different as two genre films can be, but the falloff in artistic quality is still quantifiable. Where “The Descent” was a slow, quiet, exquisitely modulated, startlingly original film, “Doomsday” is frenetic, loud, wildly imprecise and so derivative that it doesn’t so much seem to reference its antecedents as try on their famous images like a child playing dress-up. Homage without innovation isn’t homage, it’s karaoke.

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