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Title: Doomsday (2008)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Caryn Peterson | ... | Vagrant Girl |
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Adeola Ariyo | ... | Nurse |
| Emma Cleasby | ... | Katherine Sinclair | |
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Christine Tomlinson | ... | Young Eden Sinclair |
| Vernon Willemse | ... | David / Gimp | |
| Paul Hyett | ... | Hot Dog Victim | |
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Daniel Read | ... | Sergeant #1 |
| Karl Thaning | ... | Pilot | |
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Stephen Hughes | ... | Soldier #1 / Johnson |
| Jason Cope | ... | Wall Guard | |
| Ryan Kruger | ... | Soldier | |
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Nathan Wheatley | ... | Patient 'X' |
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Cecil Carter | ... | DDS Assault Trooper |
| Jeremy Crutchley | ... | Richter | |
| Rhona Mitra | ... | Eden Sinclair | |
A lethal virus spreads throughout Scotland, infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands. To contain the threat, acting authorities brutally quarantine the country as it succumbs to fear and chaos. The quarantine is successful. Three decades later, the Reaper virus violently resurfaces in London. An elite group of specialists, including Eden Sinclair, is urgently dispatched into Scotland to retrieve a cure by any means necessary. Shut off from the rest of the world, the unit must battle through a landscape that has become a waking nightmare. Written by Nicolettea
A bubble of such near-impenetrable critical praise surrounded "The Descent" back in 2006 that any argument of its greatness became moot, and for good reason: not since "The Blair Witch Project" had a horror film been given such unanimous praise. And while I don't hold "The Descent" on a master's level (I think the claustrophobic horror bests the creature-driven stuff), I still think it was a confident effort from Neil Marshall, who bucked the torture-porn trend to deliver something tense and effective. Even its winks toward genre favorites like "Alien" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" seemed like fitting Valentines from one film-making generation to another.
"Doomsday," on the other hand, is a film so saturated in homage that the overall experience can be labeled a fun rip-off at best, and a derivative, migraine-inducing mess at worst (leaning more toward the latter as it wears on). The film begins as a semi-serious, semi-playful riff on "Escape from New York" (most of the UK becomes a walled-in quarantine zone...) and "28 Days Later" (...containing a population stricken by plague), as bureaucrats enlist Eden Sinclair (Kate Beckinsa...er, Rhona Mitra), a cop with a traumatic past (and one false eye) to lead a group of cops into a London given over to anarchy and ostentatiously-pierced scumbags to find a cure.
What's most stunning--and disheartening--about "Doomsday" is how it never feels like Marshall's own vision at work. Instead of filtering his influences through an individualistic perspective, putting a new spin on old conventions, he is complacent to shift from one stylistic imitation to the next (that Marshall has a higher budget than his forefathers only underlines his lack of ingenuity and creativity here). At one moment he'll invoke Ridley Scott (during a Medieval-tinged gladiator showdown), the anti-authoritarian diatribes of John Carpenter, and the gross-out humor of early Sam Raimi or "Dead Alive"-era Peter Jackson (I'll admit I enjoyed a pitch-black gag involving a hand/retinal scan), to name a few glaring instances. By the end, he's devolved into Michael Bay--rapid cuts and zooms that make the climactic chase look like an apocalyptic sports-car commercial.
Needless to say, a film this obsessed with surface attributes pushes the characters to the back burner. Malcolm McDowell (as a rogue scientist/Ren Faire leader), Bob Hoskins, and Mitra deliver dialog that is (much in the vein of Bay) mostly relegated to the occasionally-quirky one-liner. The supporting cast is so ill-defined that I'd challenge anyone to care about their fates, let alone remember their names.
Marshall's decision to indulge a plethora of "auteur" hats also means he frequently succumbs to the overblown, in-your-face gore that has become the tiresome staple of current horror. The relative subtlety and restraint of "The Descent" has been given a 180-degree turn toward the blood-sick sadism of the "Hostel" and "Saw" flicks. Mining humor from pitch-black situations and morally repugnant characters takes a carefully trained director, but Marshall is merely content to sling tastelessness at the audience with reckless abandon, hoping something will stick. But since the characters are one-dimensional ciphers propelled along by the slim story, "Doomsday" comes closer to the dreck of an Eli Roth film than the inspired absurdity of a Monty Python sketch.