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Doomsday – Review
Neill Marshall returns to the big screen with Doomsday, his first feature film since the highly successful The Descent. Doomsday is a futuristic apocalyptic thriller set in Great Britain, We catch up with the story in 2035 where 30 years earlier a deadly virus known as the Reaper has spread in the north of Britain. This ends up with the whole of Scotland being quarantined, blocked off by giant walls and effectively locking it away from the world to stop the virus spreading. When the Reaper virus strikes again but this time in London a team of special police officers, the DSS are sent back to the quarantined Scotland to find the survivors of the original Reaper virus attack from 30 years ago to procure themselves a cure.
With a cast of British actors that many will recognize, Doomsday is possibly the biggest genre movie of its kind to come out of Britain in recent years, with Marshall managing to round up a cast that includes Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Sean Pertwee, Malcolm McDowell and a host of British actors you probably will have seen before at some point or other in TV and film work. The cast all do what’s required Mitra is good in the lead role, you do believe she is a bad ass, with Bob Hoskins playing the calmer, older and wiser mentor. The acting isn’t really what this movie is about though, its a Neill Marshall powered Sci fi apocalyptic action adventure and you can tell that the director is passionate about it. Influences for the movie are pretty obvious with bits from 28 days later, Mad Max and little bits taken from elsewhere.
Doomsday however isn’t likely to appeal to the masses though, it definitely has an audience but many people will just be instantly turned off from Doomsday which is a shame because while its not a mass market film, it is a big bold and well done British action movie on a relatively small budget of around 17 million. I’m hoping that this movie is a financial success as we don’t have many British directors who will make this kind of movie, but it may mean that Marshall’s next movie will be more along the lines of The Descent, real people in extraordinary situations and what happens when those circumstances come around. Lets also not forget some quirky music choices in Doomsday which in particular make the full on car chase in the movie that little bit extra special. Doomsday is a movie to see if you like your cult movies, watched Dog Soldiers, like apocalypic thrillers with tough female leads or are a fan or the Mad Max movies.
