RFB at the movies: DOOMSDAY

Neil Marshall, director of DOOMSDAY is the only auteur of the "splat pack" that I respect. If he uses CGI, it’s purposely visible, product placement is at a minimum and he doesn’t indulge in violence or use it to "scare" us like Eli Roth or the morons who helm the SAW films, he uses violence to it’s full effect by merely displaying it in an over-the-top yet brutal fashion.

When I saw the trailer for DOOMSDAY, I immediately wrote it off as another ULTRAVIOLET or RESIDENT EVIL clone due to the tired, uninspired, perfunctory approach to ass-kicking females in a post-apocalyptic cinema setting. Nevertheless, once the reviews began to pour in, many of them mentioned the similarities to 80’s classics such as ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and THE ROAD WARRIOR...two of my favorite action movies ever made. Immediately after hearing this, my interest or lack thereof in DOOMSDAY had shifted from apathy to urgency. Well, not really urgency but I wanted to see it. And I did.

The problem with movies like UNDERWORLD, ULTRAVIOLET and RESIDENT EVIL is that they take themselves far too serious. "Holy shit! The Umbrella corporation is manufacturing a killer zombie virus? Let’s grab some shotguns and do some bullet-time kung-fu on those conglomerate motherfuckers!" Or UNDERWORLD. "No! The Lycans are mounting a full scale attack! And the vampires are a bunch of flamboyant, role-playing game pussies interested only in chandeliers and shit! We have to grab some shotguns and do some bullet-time kung-fu on those oversized, infectious canine motherfuckers!" I’d mock ULTRAVIOLET but I’ve never seen that movie. So I apologize; don’t get mad at me or anything. What can I say, I’m a bit of a slacker.

With DOOMSDAY, baby...it don’t give a fuck. "A virus is wiping out London and it’s going up in flames?" Fuck it. "The great Bob Hoskins in a big budget B-movie?" Fuck it. "Rhona Mitra has killer tits but she isn’t showing them?" Actually that is one of my major complaints of the film. But that’s just me.

This is a nihilistic, grindhouse approach to all of those faggy video game movies. This is like an amalgamation of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE ROAD WARRIOR and THE WARRIORS. Nonetheless, DOOMSDAY isn’t an ass hair on any of these cult classics.

This is a film that is so derivative that it eventually bogs itself down and kinda shoots itself in the foot. You can’t help but compare DOOMSDAY to the aforementioned 80’s movies and they were all executed about a thousand times better. I was digging the film until the middle. Then it fell apart.

It starts out like the prologue from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, with similar on-screen schematics and narration explaining the situation. A virus has wiped out Scotland and the government builds the great wall of Scotland to keep the virus--and--mongolians from reaching the British. The virus kills everybody off and Scotland becomes the modern day equivalent of Sodom and Gommorah with rapes and killing and cannabalism. You know, the type of shit you hear about every night on the six o’ clock news.

Cut to twenty years later. The virus shows up in London and it’s spreading at an astronomical rate. So they send in Super-soldier Rhona Mitra to find survivors in Scotland to discover a fabled cure. Turns out there are more survivors them they had anticipated. And inconveniently, they’re a group of uncivilized post-modern punks who like to burn people alive and then filet their charred flesh for consumption.

Six o’ clock news, dude.

It’s awesome to this point. The action sequences were nice and bloody, any CGI was unnoticable, Rhona Mitra was cooler than Milla Jovovich in her video game movies and the score was a seamlessly blended combination of THE WARRIORS soundtrack and Carpenter’s iconic ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK score.

Then it gets really stupid. And that’s kind of an oxymoron ’cause this movie never made much sense from the get-go. I’m not gonna get into it, but the film score becomes pedestrian and standard and the narrative switchs from EXCALIBUR to a Bentley commercial, right back to THE ROAD WARRIOR and then concludes like a poor man’s (get it?) EVIL DEAD II. This movie is like a Tarantino flick but without the cool or superb execution. Like I stated earlier, DOOMSDAY is like an emulation of many other movies and sadly, isn’t as good.

Nonetheless, it don’t give a fuck. It’s similar to the 80’s big budget grindhouse movies. It doesn’t take itself serious and that can go a long way for films like this. And regardless of it’s weak execution, its a rather fun movie and oddly enough, finds comedy in this bleak, utterly insane acid trip of a future. Like for instance, just in time for Easter, a rabbit is gunned down by a robotic sentry (exploding bunny motherfucker), the EXCALIBUR segment of the film is like something out of a really bad, unaware movie (It’s actually a mediocre, self-aware movie, so it was disconcerting) and the final car chase features the central villain of the movie hanging out of the driver’s side window biting and punching the passengers while Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s "Two Tribes" plays loudly in the background. All qualms aside, it receives the RFB SEAL OF APPROVAL. Thumbs up and everything. A non-enthusiastic thumbs up; one I’m only giving as a die-hard fan of 80’s post-apocalyptic action/horror. My consensus: Wait for video. Seeing this in the theater is a waste of ten bucks.

* * Two stars.