Review of Doomsday (2008) by Marc F — 01 May 2014

Featuring one of the sexiest and coolest female leads in years, Doomsday looks good, plays out fast and wild with brilliantly bloody violence and an engaging story. It's a virus outbreak movie, yet confined in one location after borders separate uninfected areas, much like 28 Weeks Later but Doomsday does more than enough to stand out and go somewhere unique.

When I say it ventures into something unique, it's the genre mixing that Director Neil Marshall indulges in, which at first viewing divided me, but after my second viewing I realised it's a benefit, throwing in themes of futuristic action, horror, historical epic and survival movie. It's as if Marshall wanted to include everything at once and the end result is marvellous. The action is blistering and exciting, the attack on the convoy in the abandoned town is eerie and absolutely insane, attackers coming from every angle, the camerawork here captures every bit of madness. The battle with Eden and the armoured guy captured the total hotness of Rhona Mitra, who plays the hero here with smarts and wit, she is made to look like a true fighter and every single camera shot of her is sexy, like Beckinsale in Total Recall.

But, with a few British movies in recent memory there's always some aspect that tries to go American and it doesn't work well and that is the Prime Minister scenes, there's an overly dramatic tone and a lot of cheesy one liners, the soundtrack played here is too pumped and fast compared to the dialogue driven scenes, I smirked a few times as it was rather amusing, but still the rest of the movie is spectacular. I bought it out of the blue and it thrilled me from start to finish with it's all out carnage and brutal fight scenes, and I'll mention again the authority on screen by the lovely Rhona Mitra.

It's an 18 for a reason, blood spills in the gallons, injuries are displayed full on and the deaths are spectacularly violent, and it's expected seeing as Marshall directed horror masterpiece "The Descent". Some will find it's genre mashing distracting, but the tone isn't affected and it's a hell of a ride, that car chase at the end tops it all off!