Review of Doomsday (2008) by Matthew F. J — 01 Mar 2011

A virus known as The Reaper infects all of Scotland, killing off a vast number of people and leaving the rest who are immune, to rape, murder and pillage their way through life. Scotland is quarantined and sealed off from the rest of the world, until London starts to show signs of the virus within it's walls. A group of soldiers is sent into the quarantined zone, led by Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), to find the cure which the Prime Minister suspects is hidden in the infected country. What they discover is two warring factions, led by father and son, who are the survivors of the virus and have a natural immunity to it.

Doomsday could not make up it's mind on what it wanted to be. Director Neil Marshall included elements of various films and badly rehashed them to churn out his own brand of horror. 28 Days Later, The Warriors, Mad Max and Escape From New York are just some of the films he condescendingly raped to make this film. He then added some medievil elements to round off a storyline that seemed like it didn't have enough contrived scenes to begin with. Doomsday is not a horrible film, it's just discombobulated to the point of nausea. Marshall stated that he made Doomsday as a homage to the early post-apocalyptic films through the seventies, eighties and nineties. It sounded nice, but what he delivered wasn't in any way as grand as he intentionally hoped to make the film. The cinematography had that dark ambience to it's angles, with some gritty flavor, it just wasn't enough to spice up Doomsday.

Rhona Mitra has that hard-edge to her persona that worked for her character, but she doesn't pass for a Snake Plissken. Something Marshall was trying to make her character out to be. Craig Conway was a convincing leader of the marauders and maybe my favorite of the characters. His menacing stature carried the film and was only exciting whenever he came on-screen. Doomsday lacks the determination of other post-apocalyptic films of it's kind and needed more work before it's initial release.