Doomsday (2008)

Escape From Doomsday!.

I'll make this short, Doomsday takes place in the post apocalyptic future where a reaper virus is sweeping across Great Brittain killing thousands of people. The authorities decide to set up a quarantine zone where the infected can die off at their time. Years later the virus resurfaces to lay waste to the population again, this time the government does the responsible thing and sends Snake Plisken.... oh wait wrong movie, I mean Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) to go behind the wall with an elite team to find this cure amidst the apocalyptic wasteland within 48 hours into the hot zone. She will have to be a Road Warrior while she Escapes from New York, I mean the hot zone but she can't wait 28 Days Later to run away. She needs to leave these Streets of Fire before the Warriors get her. As you can see this film was so derivative and unoriginal that it becomes obvious which films were being stolen from, but it was definitely an homage. Director Niel Marshall took all of the 80's movies that inspired him and threw them in the blender resulting in a wild and kicka** action film with plenty of violence and gore which is typical especially if you've seen the director's previous films. The car chase sequences were straight out of Mad Max with the over the top villains with Mohawks and piercings and there was a medieval castle scene that happens halfway through the film which I thought was absolutely ridiculous. Anyway the film was great fun but don't take it to seriously and don't expect it to be like The Descent it was just a mindless action/sci fi film and it was a different type of film than the ones that hes done before. The Blu-ray dvd was great and had some nice features and the picture quality was absolutely stunning which makes this film worth it, all the action scenes were terrifically shot with great clarity. October 8, 2008

GOOD ACTION MOVIE

I THOUGHT THIS MOVIE WAS ACTION PAKED , THRILLING AND ENTERTAINING IN THE STYLE OF MAD MAX MOVIES . October 6, 2008

Post-apocalyptic fun for the whole the family

Going into DOOMSDAY I wasn't expecting to see anything great, just a fun MAD MAX-style movie and I got just that. I was actually expecting something mediocre with terrible acting and a lot of cheesy acting, but to be honest I thought it was a really good movie for what it was.

DOOMSDAY comes across as a rip off but seriously how far can you go with the whole post-apocalyptic virus scenario? There are obvious influences of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and the MAD MAX films (especially ROAD WARRIOR and THUNDERDOME). Throw in a bit of RESIDENT EVIL in there and you have DOOMSDAY. It wasn't anything groundbreaking but it was a lot of fun and it had some cool visuals in it. And the acting wasn't actually that bad either! The lead actress did her part well, as did the supporting cast.

If you're looking for some gore, explosions, car chases, people in ridiculous MAD MAX-style costumes, and just an overall FUN film to watch then DOOMSDAY is most definitely worth checking out!

EXTRAS: The DVD has some decent extras but nothing spectacular. A few small featurettes featuring behind the scenes footage. I tried to watch the film with Director and Cast commentary but there were way too much British accents so I had to give up on that one. October 6, 2008

Can't Believe the Man Who Made "The Descent" Also Made This

What is it with good directors making really bad post-apocalyptic movies? The brilliant Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly let fans down with his 2007 stinker Southland Tales, and now the genius behind The Descent, Neil Marshall, delivers an even worse film than the aforementioned "Southland Tales." Honestly, I can't think of any way the movie could have been worse. Let's break it down.

In short, this movie is the opposite of everything I praised him for in "The Descent." That movie subverted the horror genre, using gore only to further the psychological, claustrophobic angle of the movie. It had strong, fully fleshed out female characters that weren't stereotypes or simple femme-fatales. It had a solid, dark, emotional, and character driven story that so many horror films lack. Well, sadly enough, his next film--"Doomsday"--is one of those lacking movies. It's simply a violent, mindless testosterone fest of blood, brains, and chicks. It thrives on gore. Rabbits explode, cows get ran over, people get cooked and ripped apart, and die in pretty much every way you can imagine. Little of it was essential to the plot, and absolutely none of the gory details needed to be shown on screen. Neil Marshall went from knowing what to show and what not to show to establish the horror, but he seemed to take a lesson from Eli Roth and throw all sensible film making out the window for a blood 'n' guts party.

If you were impressed by the intelligently written and truly scary "The Descent" and want to check out the rest of Neil Marshall films, just know that you won't get more of the same in "Doomsday." This is not a smart film. It's your stereotypical action flick with a liberal amount of torture porn thrown in. And even with all of the mindless, artless gore? It still manages to be mind-numbingly boring. And that is truly a feat.

0/10 October 6, 2008

Interesting...

Doomsday is certainly one of the more bizarre sci-fi horror flicks I've seen; think a frantic, chaotic mash-up of Mad Max, Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, Road Warriors, Escape from New York, and pretty much any other post-apocalyptic zombie flick you can think of, with a dash of Braveheart and a hint of Underworld thrown in for spice. Add a reasonable, if plot-hole-riddled, storyline, some government conspiracy, lots of fake blood, guns, swords, Molotov cocktails, explosions, and an awesome soundtrack. Mix together well, turn your brain off, and you might just enjoy this movie.
It starts out with a flashback to Scotland in the near future; a deadly disease called the Reaper Virus has ravenged the populous, and the government concludes that the best course of action is to quarantine the entire country. Thirty years later, an outbreak of the virus in London prompts the Prime Minister and his cronies to reveal some new information: it turns out that there were survivors beyond the wall after all, and they might hold the key to finding a cure.
Enter Eden Sinclair, part of post-apocalyptic London's answer to the police, who is sent over the wall with a team of soldiers and scientists to find a doctor who at one time had been working on finding a cure before being trapped behind the wall.
They eventually do find Dr. Kane, but not before encountering the two very different groups of survivors living in quarantined Scotland (Kane's medieval knights and castle-dwellers and his son, Sol's, 80's punk-revival cannibals), both of whom are trying their best to kill the intruders. All of this concludes in a car chase across the countryside a-la-Road Warriors that pretty much kills any seriousness that might have been accrued in the first hour-and-a-half.
Doomsday isn't smart or original by any means, but if you don't mind a little gore (or a lot, as the case may be), it's a fun action flick. October 3, 2008

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