Review of Doomsday (2008) by Clinton V — 13 Jul 2010

Neil Marshall's DOOMSDAY works best when viewed as an homage to the futuristic/apocalyptic genre of films from the 1980s, rather than when viewed simply as a film on its own merits. There are some things that the film does quite well, most notably in the stylistic department, but when it's all said and done, there was a lot of potential for this project left on the table.

Rhona Mitra (HOLLOW MAN) stars as the female lead of the film, who is recruited by her longtime mentor (Bob Hoskins) for a mission into a post-apocalyptic Scotland to retrieve the cure to a plague that is threatening the rest of the UK. That's all one really needs to know regarding the film, because once that is all established, the rest of the proceedings are pretty standard action film fare, albeit done in a much more stylistic manner than audiences are used to.

That is where DOOMSDAY succeeds. It makes standard action sequences, such as foot chases, car chases, and so on look much more interesting on a visual level. The film sees various changes in the overall look to the film, from the moments when the military team first steps foot into Scotland, which looks very much like a typical apocalyptic thriller. The film at that point is bathed in darkness and shadows, with overgrown plant life all over the place. The film later on moves to the countryside of Scotland and to a castle where we get a wonderfully over-the-top performance from Malcolm McDowell as the self-appointed "king" of that particular area. At this point in the film, it's sunny, and things look very much like what one might find in a film about King Arthur or in other films set in a similar time period.

The action in DOOMSDAY, while fairly standard, can be quite brutal at times, which is a fitting style for the type of film that Neil Marshall tries to put together here. The acting is never particularly great, although Malcolm McDowell is quite good in his limited screen time, and a lot of it comes across as "been there, done that" type of material, but DOOMSDAY is an entertaining film nonetheless, and there are certainly much worse ways to spend a couple of hours.