Doomsday [2008] - Universal Studios

More Marshall Mayhem

Fine Young Cannibals anyone? Playing this just before dinner is served to the surprisingly gorgeous post-viral masses was a stroke of genius and I haven't heard Dog Eat Dog by Adam and the Ants for years. Get your pot and toss in bits of Mad Max, 28 Days Later, Resident Evil and a heroine whose cajones are bigger than her devestatingly effective eyeball and you have a hit. It's fun, violent and surprisingly well acted. Get your popcorn out, don't order the Sunday roast and prepare to be entertained.

superb

excellent movie that is great fun.this has everything car chases,cannibals,sword fights,shoot out,punch ups and preety anything else you can think of.this is a first class sci fi action romp that worth paying £20 for.i very highly recommend this movie

Great undemanding fun.

Neil Marshalls third movie movs from the horror genre to the pulp sci fi format. Many movies are homaged, I say homaged as opposed to ripped off as it is clearly intentional.

Violent, gory and great fun!

After an outbreak of a deadly virus, Scotland is completely sealed off so that the virus cannot escape. Fast-forward 25 years and the virus seems to have finally hit England. Luckily, in the completely dead and closely monitored Scotland survivors have been spotted on satellite images, so a group of soldiers are sent into the contained area to find the survivors and hopefully the cure, so that the virus doesn't spread throughout England or even the rest of the world. What the soldiers find though are tribes of survivors who have a very barbaric and primitive ways of life, which makes the search for the cure all that much more difficult for the soldiers.

I really enjoyed the director's previous films, Dog Soldiers and The Descent, so I was really looking forward to seeing this. From word of mouth I was under the impression that this was going to be a zombie film but although it has a post-apocalyptic setting, this is not a zombie movie at all, but all the better for that reason.

Like Dog Soldiers, this is a bit of a black comedy mixed with a horror and is also extremely violent and gory. There are so many similarities to so many different action and horror films that it seems to flick from one style to the next throughout the course of the film. It starts off like 28 Days Later, moves on to Resident Evil, then Aliens, then Mad Max and even Robin Hood and Gladiator. Fortunately this works really well as the pace of the film is really fast and there is plenty of variety so it doesn't get boring at all. Some of the scenes get tense with one in particular near the beginning when they first come across the tribe in the hospital and I was literally on the edge of my seat. It's not particularly scary but does have some very shocking scenes that I really wasn't expecting.

Overall this isn't as good as Dog Soldiers and nowhere near as good as The Descent but is definitely worth a watch. Just don't take this film too seriously as it really isn't made to be watched that way. Enjoy it for what it is - a violent, funny, exciting and very gory horror/comedy that has non-stop action from the word go.

Bloody good fun from a modern B-movie master

As a British male swiftly approaching 30, I know I'm not alone in getting a bit nostalgic now and then. Particularly when it comes to the movies. In an age where more and more action and horror films are being dished up to us neutered and sanitised - PG-13 'Terminator' and 'Die Hard' films, for God's sake! - I find myself more and more taking comfort in the full-on blood and guts fuelled classics of yesteryear. Ranking high among those are the films of John Carpenter, and George Miller's 'Mad Max' trilogy (or the first two at least.) And I'm certain I'm not the only one who had long been wishing that someone would come along and create a new movie in that 80's B-movie style.

Well, wish no longer. Neil Marshall has answered those prayers with 'Doomsday!'

And by gum, he's had a lot of mud flung at him for it. And the mudflingers really need to chill. Yes, the premise basically is 'Escape From New York' in Scotland, right down to the brooding synth score and the Atari-style graphics used to illustrate the walled-in zone. Even the same John Carpenter font is used for the opening credits! But it's not as if Marshall expects us not to notice this. At heart, `Doomsday' is doing the exact same thing that `Grindhouse' intended to do: evoke the spirit of a past age in cinema. And I dare say Marshall has done so far more successfully than Rodgriguez and Tarantino managed to. For as loaded as `Doomsday' is with knowing film geek references, it never gets all `nudge-nudge wink-wink' about it. There's humour, for sure, but never does it lapse into parody, not even when the music of the Fine Young Cannibals and Frankie Goes To Hollywood make an appearance.

Marshall made a decent first impression with the lightweight but likeable `Dog Soldiers,' and cemented himself as director of real power and vision with the awesome, truly scary `The Descent.' Here, while continuing his fascination with titles beginning in `D' (?!), he shows that he's far from a one-trick pony, staging numerous massive action sequences that squeeze in an impressive amount of bang-for-buck (the budget being I believe in the region of $30 million; his biggest to date, but small change by modern Hollywood standards). The script may be a bit patchy, sporting some dodgy dialogue and poor plotting, and some of the performances are a little lacking - in particular, sad to say, those from old pros Bob Hoskins and Malcolm McDowell. It's left to leading lady Rhona Mitra to catch the ball, and to my surprise she does so admirably. Step aside Alice and Lara - Eden Sinclair is the best action heroine we've had in years, and it's all down to Ms Mitra (though Adrian Lester provides solid support, and Marshall mainstay Craig Conway makes for a great psychotic nemesis). Far from being another embarrassing case of pretty girl trying to act tough - Denise Richards, anyone? - there's no doubt from her first moment on screen that Eden is not someone to be messed with, and when she kicks ass, you believe it.

But ass doesn't just get kicked in `Doomsday.' Oh no. It gets bludgeoned. It gets perforated. After all, why just cleanly stab someone when you can instead bloodily dismember and decapitate them? There's a big part of why this movie so much fun, and so reminiscent of the glory days of 80's action and horror - there's not a dry death in sight. And thankfully, little if any of it is that lame CG blood we're all growing sick of the sight of these days. Add to that a spot of great old school car chase action, and even a soupcon of swordplay, and you've got yourself just over an hour and half of blistering entertainment. Yes, of course it's a bit silly, and very, very, very derivative. But it's so much fun. It might not change anyone's life, but I really struggle to see how anyone couldn't at least have a good time. Naysayers be damned. Neil Marshall is here to stay. Bravo.