"When the first outbreak of the Reaper virus hit Scotland, Eden Sinclair was one of the last to escape containment and had to leave her mother behind. Twenty-five years later, Maj. Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) leads a team back into the hot zone to find a counteragent to the virus, which has re-emerged in London. She and her comrades wage a desperate battle for survival against feral survivors, as they try to prevent it from ushering in a new dark age."
This is one of the most ridiculous movies I have loved. Coming out around the time that young teenage me was in love with Rhona Mitra with her roles in Boston Legal and Nip/Tuck, and when bio-virus and zombie movies were all the rage, it came out at the right time to get my full attention. It's interesting to see that Neil Marshall directed this film (he just directed that horrendous Hellboy reboot).
So what exactly is up with this film. Doomsday is a concoction that stitches together so many other popular movies. Starting off paying homage to 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, the film jumps into a Blade meets Aliens situation that then turns into Mad Max: The Road Warrior, before going off on a King Arthur tangent, ending in a Mission Impossible meets The Fast and the Furious. The amount of films this seems to rip-off is shocking, but what is even more shocking is how much I enjoy this film. I used to have over 500 DVDs, and when I sold/gave them away, Doomsday was one of the 10 DVDs I retained.
Rhona Mitra is vibing her early career days as the live action model for Lara Croft, the lead character in Eidos Interactive's Tomb Raider video game series, with some extra spunk thrown in from Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley (Alien), and some fight choreography and outfits from Kate Beckinsale's Selene in Underworld. Doomsday is a cobble pot of things that are no doubt chosen to get that testosterone flowing, and it succeeds despite a frankly ridiculous plot.
Standout performance has to come from Craig Conway in his role as Sol. An absolutely maniacal performance with 100% passion and effort. A performance that I would like to think influenced the pirate lord Vaas Montenegro from the Far Cry 3 video game.
As a teen, I loved the idea of post-apocalyptic worlds and the overall rebellious aesthetic of this world intrigued me to no end. There is a fine line between stupid and fun, and this film balances along that line well. There is no real reason from a film studies perspective to say that the film is good. Its tone and genre are inconsistent and constantly in flux. It almost feels like the highlight reel from a season of Star Trek, where each scene represents a different planet explored. But it is nevertheless fun and an adrenaline-fuelled adventure that never takes its foot off the gas.
The cars, the costuming, the environments, the villains; everything is surprisingly well put together. Everything except the plot. The film never gives you a chance to rest; everything is on a ticking timer, and the tension carries you throughout. Visually exciting, the set designs are thorough and engaging. It's hilariously bad overall, but I still love it.