Crowd-pleasing comic werewolf movie DOG SOLDIERS and uber-terrifying claustrophobia-fest THE DESCENT were always going to be tough acts to follow, and for his third feature, writer/director Neil Marshall, armed for the first time with a sizable budget courtesy of significant U.S. funding, wisely chooses a different tack entirely. DOOMSDAY is an unashamedly retro splatter-laced action flick that wears its influences on its sleeve in the form of fan boy in-jokes (characters named “Miller” and “Carpenter”) and whole scenes patterned after memorable moments in the MAD MAX trilogy or ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. You have to have spent a good part of your formative years lapping up gory 80’s post-apocalyptic exploitation movies to fully appreciate this movie – and, if you did, it’s a blast. If you didn’t, and were able to fill your adolescent free time with other pursuits like screwing girls and poisoning loved ones, then good on you for getting out more than us movie geeks.
In the modern day, the frighteningly efficient and deadly “Reaper” virus sweeps through Scotland with far more conviction than the still-unimpressive but ever-feared Bird Flu. As a result of the ensuing carnage and mass-death, Scotland is sectioned off and established as a rigorously controlled quarantine zone. In the year 2035, a virus victim shows up in London and panic swiftly sets in. Feisty glass-eyed Rhona Mitra heads a crack team hired by the powers that be to venture into the forbidden Scottish zone and retrieve the antidote to the virus allegedly developed by ever so slightly mad doc Malcolm McDowell. As the capital hovers on the brink of Total Chaos and threatens to spill over into TOTAL FUCKIN’ CHAOS!!!, Mitra and co are given 36 hours to complete the mission. A significant obstacle is the fact that the general populace in Scotland has devolved into a bunch of barbaric primitives pitched somewhere between medieval and punk eras, with their own tribes, rules and rituals.
Marshall brings a fan’s enthusiasm and reverence to this movie that lifts it far above what one assumes the threatened “official” remake of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK will turn out like. As writer he has a good deal of fun with deliberately silly comic book dialogue (“If you’re hungry, have a piece of your friend!”), throwaway cynicism (an infected, duplicitous Prime Minister) and nods to the Carpenter flick’s iconic hero Snake Plissken, including the hi-tech glass eye sported by similarly mono-syllabic (but infinitely sexier) ass-kicking heroine Mitra. And as a director handed his biggest cinematic toy box to date, Marshall delivers an almost uninterrupted series of loud, brutal set-pieces ripe with decapitations, exploding tanks and exemplary stunt work. After a marvelously grim and powerful apocalyptic introductory section, DOOMSDAY delivers the kind of riotous, old-school action movie spectacle that has, of late, been largely replaced by anonymous CGI.
Best check your pulse if you don’t get some kind of kick out of the film’s exuberant use of pole dancers, gimps, exploding rabbits and Paul Hyett’s extensive, gruesome make-up effects. Some kind of highpoint is reached early on when DOG SOLDIERS’ ill-fated Sarge Sean Pertwee is barbecued and eaten alive, but the movie tops it (and then some) with an exhilarating climactic extended car chase partially set to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes”, which has never sounded better. Almost as much fun is a bizarre crowd scene with ironic use of another 80’s pop hit, the Fine Young Cannibals’ annoyingly infectious “Good Thing” – a scene that, typical of the movie’s free-wheeling anything-goes tone, somehow winds up with a MOULIN ROUGE-esque can-can routine.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
