Doomsday

There came a point during a spectacular car chase sequence in Doomsday, when the soundtrack shifted from perfectly matched orchestral staccato to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes”, which caused me to wince. Immediately I was removed from what had been a gripping ode to action glory and snapped into the reality of wondering how much of this film’s budget went up people’s noses, as opposed to being put on film.

Such is the fate of Neil Marshall’s post-apocalyptic big budget B-movie that seems torn between castigating itself and entertaining the audience.

Set in the year 2035, roughly 30 years after the Ebola-like Reaper virus began decimating the population of Scotland, forcing the British government to wall the country off in an attempt to contain the bug from spreading southward, Doomsday tells the story of a team of commandos sent into the wastelands to try and find a cure. Spy satellites have revealed that there are folks still alive beyond the wall and discovering why the virus hasn’t killed everyone is deemed imperative in the wake of an outbreak in heavily overcrowded London.

Marshall, who has risen to reverential status in the oft maligned horror genre for his critically acclaimed Dog Soldiers and The Descent, makes no pretence that he’s created a work of high art here. He openly admits that the concept of the film came to him in two stages, after visiting Hadrian’s Wall that divides Scotland from England and being struck with the thought of what if such a thing were erected today, coupled with a dream that involved a woman fighting a knight in armour. From there it was only a matter of time before a patchwork quilt of ideas cobbled from other movies began to be thrown against the wall to see which stuck.

The end result is a movie that looks and feels like the Highland fling version of The Road Warrior, with Glasgow having fallen into the hands of the mohawked Sol (Craig Conway), the psychopathic leader of a band of tattooed, punked-out Braveheart cannibals, and the medieval Camelot-like society that has taken root in a Highland castle at the court of Kane (Malcom McDowell) a government scientist originally working to find a cure for the Reaper virus but abandoned behind the wall when the country was sealed off.

From this mix the audience is treated to copious quantities of people being cut down by bullets, knives, axes, maces, grenades, kung fu, impalings and car wreaks. And while it’s easy to see why most critics will savage this movie, after all, it practically begs for it, the best advice I can give is this; if you’re looking for some terrific action that has been created by good old fashion stunt-folks instead of the ever pervasive CGI, and aren’t looking for anything deep except some fun while you munch on your popcorn, then I think you’ll find the spirit in which Neil Marshall made this movie.

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