Doomsday (DVD)
The running time is 1 hr. 45 mins..
The film tells the story of an elite team of soldiers sent into a walled-off Scotland to find the cure for a rampaging virus about to lay waste to an overpopulated London. This down and dirt B-movie is as gritty and as grotesque as they come, however the talented Marshall (his The Descent is one of the best horror films I've seen this decade) pays homage to so many differing creative influences the resulting film plays more like a highlight reel of other director's works, than an actual film of its own. It's annoyingly disappointing, and if the filmmaker had just spent a little more time honing his own vision instead of celebrating that of others this easily could have been one of the more enjoyable post-apocalyptic meat grinders I'd seen in ages.
The clearest influence here, of course, is John Carpenter and his seminal Escape from New York. The hero Eden Sinclair (played with suitably gruff gusto by Rhona Mitra) is obviously mean to be a female counterpart to Kurt Russell's immortal antihero Snake Plisken, while both Tyler Bates' (300) electronic-heavy score and Simon Bowles' (Marshall's Dog Soldiers) production design come freakishly close to copycatting that 1981 cult classic.
But that isn't the only influence felt here. Elements of Paul Bartel's Death Race 2000, George Miller's Mad Max trilogy, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil can all be found here. Heck, even John Boorman's Excalibur gets a medieval nod or two, all of these elements and more tossed together into a hyper-violent stew Marshall vigorously tries to boil into something uniquely his own.
Problem is the resulting meal is more like Chef Boyardee than it is mom's home cooking, and as much fun as bits and pieces of this massive casserole can be when the plates of been cleared and the dishes washed it's hard not to notice the fact everything you've just consumed is nothing more than a few empty calories. It just doesn't work, and while I can't say watching it was either a chore or a challenge the fact that it was somewhat innocuously passable doesn't make the film any less of a waste of my time.
At least Universal doesn't completely miss the boat on the DVD. Unlike so many discs that make you choose between buying an unrated edition (that the director probably didn't even approve of) or the theatrical release, this one offers both cuts of the film on the same disc. While the differences between the two are pretty negligible (the one with exploding body parts – and rabbits – is the one sans rating), I like that both of these are here, my hope being that other studios will follow this one's lead and do the same with future titles.
The other special features are the usual mixed bag of featurettes ("Anatomy of Catastrophe: Civilization on the Brink" is actually one of the better making-of bits I've seen in quite some time), while the audio commentary director Neil Marshall (who talks a LOT about Carpenter – he's obviously a fan) and cast members Sean Pertwee, Darren Morfitt, Rick Warden and Les Simpson is far more interesting than the movie actually deserves. All-in-all it's a decent disc, and I imagine fans of the film are going to find very little here to complain about.
The rest of us, however, will only look at Doomsday and sadly shake our heads. There is a good B-movie aching to break out here, moments of it popping up to flash a bloody smile in our direction only to suddenly disappear back within the quagmire of too many influences and far too little focus. While I get what Marshall was trying to do (and would have been exceedingly happy to have seen him succeed), the director misses the mark, this motion picture a self-destructing disappointment ultimately impossible to enjoy.