Doomsday – 0.5/5

Mike Grist Book / Movie Reviews Leave a Comment

What a load of garbage.

Doomsday is an adolescent male’s mash-up fantasy of a bunch of other post-apocalypse SF-type
movies, executed abysmally, with some of the worst writing I’ve seen.  Take large chunks of 28 weeks later and Escape from New York, mix liberally with dashes of Mad Max, Resident Evil, and Lara Croft, throw in a little Alien- set the whole thing in some 80’s vision of the future (2023) with both cannibal hedonist street punks AND medieval knights living in castles, and this is what you get.

We open with a lot of voice-over, similar to 28 weeks later, explaining how the virus occurred, and how it was mismanaged. This section was quite slick, and I thought I might be in for a decent rip-off. But no. Every line is hackneyed and a cliche and from another movie. Every shot is a shot I’ve seen before. Every plot thread is unoriginal. Every character is a shell. Every attempt to put us in some SF future world is laughable- she has a video camera eye! Data storage is on little discs! They have poly-fiber carbon flexible body-shells (that just make them look like dudes wearing skating kneepads all over their bodies)!

I can’t believe how much money got thrown at such a juvenile script. How can we make intelligent and reasoned movies like 28 weeks later- then produce this garbage? Did none of the actors (Bob Hoskins, Malcolm Mcdowell) realize they were reading lines from a script written by a 13-year old who’s hopped up on smarties and his first glass of Special Brew? Or were they just in it for the money? I can only think the second option, because the whole thing is a wanton waste of energy, lazy manipulative directing (the girls can’t really fight? So quick-hash cut the fight scenes together so they seem to be high-energy and vicious).

Or the third option. This is the writer/director (Neil Marshall) who did Dog Soldiers and The Descent. The Descent was excellent, and Dog Soldiers was a good laugh. So the actors/producers thought- I don’t see what’s great about it, but his other movies were great, so this one must be too. But this is not great. I think Neil Marshall has Shyamalan-ed himself and used up all his skill on his first two movies.

What a joke. I should be making these movies. I think I’ll write a script.

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