If there's one thing that I kept thinking during Doomsday, it was "What is going on?" Doomsday is a frenetic mish-mash of so many different movies that it's... Well... Really just ridiculous.
Canning the serious aspects last seen in his excellent film about cave-spelunking gone horribly wrong (The Descent); Neil Marshall has diverted his attention to creating a big-budget film based solely around a post-apocalyptic clash of equally sadistic civilizations. The film tells the story of a disease that spreads like a cold and mutilates/kills anyone that it comes into contact with. So with such a powerful threat to the human race, how do you stop that which has no weakness? Containment of course. Unable to find a cure, the government decides to seal its occupants within a fortified area (think the Great Wall of China) and leave them to rot in their own sickness.
Now jump ahead years later and... Oh no! The disease has found its way out of the "Hot Zone" and is now spreading once again. But... There is hope. And that hope lies back in the place that the rest of humanity left behind. Somehow, a group of people left within the barricade have survived; having developed an immunity of sorts. Now it's up to a bunch of paper-thin characters and one Underworld-Kate-Beckinsale-Look-a-Like (Rhona Mitra) to head into the forbidden land to find a cure before the entire world is encompassed in the horrific epidemic.
At this point in the film, Neil Marshall knows all you want to see is crazy action, so any character development, any signs of a good script, any logic... Well, it's all just done away with. Even technically the movie falters in the first thirty minutes with some extremely gratuitous editing. During some conversational moments with ol' Bob Hoskins and his power-hungry superiors, the shots are just jumping all over the place. Seriously, within about ten seconds of two people talking there were about five edits bouncing from face to face. The quickened pace of these moments seem to drive home the fact that even Neil Marshall had no interest in them, he just wanted to get to the meat of the film-the crazy violence and action. Bear in mind, once it gets to the actual "meat" of the story, the jump cuts do calm down a bit.
Okay so here's where I talk about the only reason people are going to see this movie: the action. For anyone that hasn't seen a Neil Marshall film (and yes, I am quite a fan), know that there will be lots of bloody action... Lots and lots of it. Most of the time it's so over-the-top that it's just funny to watch... And Doomsday is no exception. Various limbs go flying, people are squashed beneath hulking masses of military machines, others are shot, bludgeoned, flambéed, eaten, tortured, and we even get a grisly close-up of someone's head meeting the "bad-end" of a shotgun. Now that I think of it, Neil even reuses a scene that was last witnessed during the climax of The Descent. But like I said, the film abandons any serious undertones so just about all of the violence (while definitely gross) doesn't feel exploitive or horrific.
At about the halfway point is where things took quite an unexpected turn. Showing that not everyone became psychos ripped right out of Mad Max, we are given a glimpse into a sadistic medieval world whose introduction looks like the "Stay off the Road" scene from the first Lord of the Rings film.
Even the final chase scene looks like something right out of a Bentley car commercial as it steers perfectly around ruined vehicles that just happened to create an obstacle course.
But all of this isn't to say that the film is bad... If anything it's damn entertaining just because of how crazy the whole thing is. You've got cannibals with mohawks, knights on horseback, characters who have no other purpose than to kill and look good doing it (seriously the film's characters are possibly even emptier than those seen in the game-to-movie flop "Doom"). Really, just do what the film does: throw away all serious and logical expectations, turn your brain off and enjoy the mindless post-apocalyptic copycat that is Doomsday. I give this movie kudos just for that. It's crazy, it's really violent, and it's just plain out ludicrous-thus, it is entertaining. However, after The Descent and Dog Soldiers (both of which have returning actors/actresses) I'm very disappointed that Neil relied on copying so many films to make his, instead of trying to make something his own (the final chase even has a scene ripped directly out of Mad Max: the Road Warrior-hint-it involves three cars driving side by side, one car shooting and another car jamming on the breaks).
Overall, while I'm very disappointed that Doomsday was just a collection of used ideas, I'm glad that it was entertaining at the very least. Oh, and be on the lookout for a gimp straight out of Pulp Fiction... His "climax" pretty much made the film for me.
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