Review of Doomsday (2008) by Meritcoba — 25 Mar 2017

Another failed attempt to make a successor to Mad Max? Perhaps so, read on and make up your own mind.

Doomsday is clearly an attempt to be another Mad Max movie, with its apocalyptic feel expressed by the fall of civilization highlighted notably by the band of feral human flesh eating crazies headed by Sol(Craig Conway). They could have walked out from Road Warrior and walk right the into Fury Road.

There is nothing wrong with this and there are even great moments, where the chase from Road Warrior is recreated with the usual fun mayhem. Conway does well as the lunatic Sol and when he is in the camera the movie is at its most interesting.

Unfortunately this cannot be said about the lead, Rhona Mitra's character Eden. She is cast like a mix of Snake Plisken and Mad Max, but she has nothing of the anti-hero stance and cynical wit of the first, or the taciturn reluctant lonely person that Mad Max is. These two are heroes despite their own desires. Eden acts like it, but there is nothing to underpin it. Her character is even given an interesting angle, for she lost her mother, but besides that nothing is done with this, while this could have been MacGuffin that makes Eden go out there: to find her mother. Eden is an uninteresting fighting machine I did not care for much.

And unfortunately, no other character fills in the void. The group with soldiers that tags along with Eden get no chance to show personality. There are many other flaws in the movie, but they can be accepted, but the lack of interesting personalities makes me not care for them and coupled with a weak script this makes it a meh movie at best.