DVD Sunday: Doomsday
Not wholly unredeemable but a bit of a disappointment - By Morgan Short, May 17, 08
I was really excited to get this movie and in the cab ride home from the store I rolled down the window and yelled "Dooooooommssday" to all the people riding their bikes and walking their dogs.
Reading the movie description on the back of the DVD elucidates that Doomsday (2007) is a set in a post-apocalyptic future and ... stop, stop you had me right there. You had me at "post-apocalypse."
Blissfully bereft of commentary on the human condition is Neil Marshall's Doomsday, unless the comment it wishes to make is "live in the now; you never know when someone will shoot you in the face with a shotgun." Either that or "be yourself." Whichever.
Set in the year 2037, Doomsday takes place in post-apocalyptic UK, where Scotland has been decimated by the incurable "Reaper" virus. To contain the disease, the corrupt powers-that-be had walled off the northern country, leaving the disease to run its course and kill off the infected population. When the Reaper virus crops up in London, it is revealed that there are in fact survivors in Scotland who may have found a cure. Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is sent in behind the steel wall to find out.
So the majority of the film is Sinclair fighting an army of cannibals in the future. This army is lifted right out of Mad Max and the guys are all dress up like The Exploited and the girls all look like Amy Winehouse. Although it's worth noting that despite weathering a doomsday virus, the characters in the film all look quite a bit more robust and healthier than Winehouse (the image of her distended crack belly in real life is scarier than anything in this movie).
The aesthetic of video game violence is set very early on in the movie, maintained throughout, and then amplified just short of being comedic. Dismemberings and beheadings are frequent, and people explode like watermelons on a delightfully consistent basis -- and that's just fine. Creative deaths are had for all the main bad guys and supporting character good guys.
Doomsday is essentially four or five classic '80s sci-fi / action movies thrown in a blender and purified. The chunky bits that stick out as gristle are "Escape from New York" and "Mad Max." The more bloody, sinuous parts are every British zombie movie in the last five years, every single doomsday virus movie in the last 10 years, and every single Milla Jovovich movie ever made (besides "The Fifth Element," I suppose). What else? Alien. That's in there too. Eden Sinclair is basically a diet version of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. In the third act, I detected the faint flavor of "Army of Darkness" in there as well. And the Malcolm McDowell narration at the start also felt very Clockwork Orange-ey to me too.
Doomsday is essentially a vanity project for director Neil Marshall (dir. "The Descent," 2005), who seems eager to splash around in the slaughterhouse that John Carpenter built. He crosses the line from ripping off Mad Max into "tributing" Mad Max, by not hiding the fact at all that the sequences and conflicts are lifted straight out of that genre-defining series. A few fanboy elements are thrown in there for good measure for the die-hards to pick up on (two of the guards in the movie are called Carpenter and Miller -- Carpenter direct Escape from New York, and Miller directed Mad Max). Although we're living in the age of bombastic CGI and Matrix-style action sequences, there's a palpable '80s action feel to Doomsday, and the movie is a deliberately trashy and campy film -- an exploitation of the genre. But can you produce camp on purpose?
In the end Doomsday just wasn't as enjoyable as I expected. The movie flip flops between paying faithful tribute to the '80s post apocalypse movie but it also extends it into satirical grounds, and this blurs the overall focus of the film. Marshall clearly likes the movies he's mimicking, but he's not all that serious about it -- he's trying to be clever -- and he injects this sort of comedic distance with the material that's alienating to the audience. This kind of thing works for Quentin Tarantino because Tarantino is deadly serious about the movies he makes movies about, and is completely in his own world with it -- it's easy to get swept along in his aesthetic zeal.
Doomsday feels like Marshall trying to have a bit of a laugh while showing that he's a creative and talented guy, and well-versed in film history. And yeah he is, but his essential loftiness from the material -- despite an obvious affection for the genre -- prevents a basically good movie from being a truly great movie.
But yeah, it's defiantly worth checking out and full of good stuff -- a bunny rabbit getting exploded by a canon and a severed head splattering into the picture frame being two such examples. Grade: B-
Complimentary Sherpas order: Well, the movie takes place in Scotland and London so I would think haggis or some kind of UK pub fare would be in a fitting compliment. Shepherd's pies? I don't know though. When thinking about post-apocalyptical wastelands, the words "Taco Popo" spring to mind for me. And so that's what I went with.
And it felt right too. Armageddon and grilled chicken breast chimichangas go together real nice.
Reading the movie description on the back of the DVD elucidates that Doomsday (2007) is a set in a post-apocalyptic future and ... stop, stop you had me right there. You had me at "post-apocalypse."
Blissfully bereft of commentary on the human condition is Neil Marshall's Doomsday, unless the comment it wishes to make is "live in the now; you never know when someone will shoot you in the face with a shotgun." Either that or "be yourself." Whichever.
Set in the year 2037, Doomsday takes place in post-apocalyptic UK, where Scotland has been decimated by the incurable "Reaper" virus. To contain the disease, the corrupt powers-that-be had walled off the northern country, leaving the disease to run its course and kill off the infected population. When the Reaper virus crops up in London, it is revealed that there are in fact survivors in Scotland who may have found a cure. Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is sent in behind the steel wall to find out.
So the majority of the film is Sinclair fighting an army of cannibals in the future. This army is lifted right out of Mad Max and the guys are all dress up like The Exploited and the girls all look like Amy Winehouse. Although it's worth noting that despite weathering a doomsday virus, the characters in the film all look quite a bit more robust and healthier than Winehouse (the image of her distended crack belly in real life is scarier than anything in this movie).
The aesthetic of video game violence is set very early on in the movie, maintained throughout, and then amplified just short of being comedic. Dismemberings and beheadings are frequent, and people explode like watermelons on a delightfully consistent basis -- and that's just fine. Creative deaths are had for all the main bad guys and supporting character good guys.
Doomsday is essentially four or five classic '80s sci-fi / action movies thrown in a blender and purified. The chunky bits that stick out as gristle are "Escape from New York" and "Mad Max." The more bloody, sinuous parts are every British zombie movie in the last five years, every single doomsday virus movie in the last 10 years, and every single Milla Jovovich movie ever made (besides "The Fifth Element," I suppose). What else? Alien. That's in there too. Eden Sinclair is basically a diet version of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. In the third act, I detected the faint flavor of "Army of Darkness" in there as well. And the Malcolm McDowell narration at the start also felt very Clockwork Orange-ey to me too.
Doomsday is essentially a vanity project for director Neil Marshall (dir. "The Descent," 2005), who seems eager to splash around in the slaughterhouse that John Carpenter built. He crosses the line from ripping off Mad Max into "tributing" Mad Max, by not hiding the fact at all that the sequences and conflicts are lifted straight out of that genre-defining series. A few fanboy elements are thrown in there for good measure for the die-hards to pick up on (two of the guards in the movie are called Carpenter and Miller -- Carpenter direct Escape from New York, and Miller directed Mad Max). Although we're living in the age of bombastic CGI and Matrix-style action sequences, there's a palpable '80s action feel to Doomsday, and the movie is a deliberately trashy and campy film -- an exploitation of the genre. But can you produce camp on purpose?
In the end Doomsday just wasn't as enjoyable as I expected. The movie flip flops between paying faithful tribute to the '80s post apocalypse movie but it also extends it into satirical grounds, and this blurs the overall focus of the film. Marshall clearly likes the movies he's mimicking, but he's not all that serious about it -- he's trying to be clever -- and he injects this sort of comedic distance with the material that's alienating to the audience. This kind of thing works for Quentin Tarantino because Tarantino is deadly serious about the movies he makes movies about, and is completely in his own world with it -- it's easy to get swept along in his aesthetic zeal.
Doomsday feels like Marshall trying to have a bit of a laugh while showing that he's a creative and talented guy, and well-versed in film history. And yeah he is, but his essential loftiness from the material -- despite an obvious affection for the genre -- prevents a basically good movie from being a truly great movie.
But yeah, it's defiantly worth checking out and full of good stuff -- a bunny rabbit getting exploded by a canon and a severed head splattering into the picture frame being two such examples. Grade: B-
Complimentary Sherpas order: Well, the movie takes place in Scotland and London so I would think haggis or some kind of UK pub fare would be in a fitting compliment. Shepherd's pies? I don't know though. When thinking about post-apocalyptical wastelands, the words "Taco Popo" spring to mind for me. And so that's what I went with.
And it felt right too. Armageddon and grilled chicken breast chimichangas go together real nice.
djsexypaul
May 19, 08
who threw the wite wine over you at K% on Saturday Morgan ? Want me to make her pregnant for you??
ISpyShanghai.com
May 20, 08
Moooooooorggggaaaaaaannn!
Good review, it's always just Shepherd's Pie though- never plural. They'd splatter your head into a picture frame for that in London don't you know.
Good review, it's always just Shepherd's Pie though- never plural. They'd splatter your head into a picture frame for that in London don't you know.
Kart
May 21, 08
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