20 Years After

In the near future, a team of soldiers infiltrate a sealed-off and quarantined Scotland in order to find a cure for a deadly virus. A messy post-apocalyptic thriller from Neil Marshall, writer-director of Dog Soldiers and The Descent
You can't accuse director Neil Marshall of standing still. While he's an unashamed horror filmmaker all the way, he hasn't simply followed up his acclaimed, werewolf-infested 2001 debut Dog Soldiers with more of the same. The Descent proved to be a very different proposition, a bleak and downright brutal tale capable of giving nightmares to anyone with claustrophobia. With his third film Doomsday, he's gone in yet another direction. There's still plenty of action and gallons of gore, but this time he's crafted a distinctly 1980s-inspired post-apocalyptic thriller. Indeed, with Adam & The Ants and Frankie Goes To Hollywood on the soundtrack, and a visual style cheerfully ripped off from Mad Max 2 and early John Carpenter films, it's hard to think how Doomsday could be any more 1980s if it tried. Marshall's enthusiasm for the genre is obvious, and the film is packed to bursting with energy - but a major shortage of original ideas and decent dialogue leaves this jumbled B-movie homage terminally stuck in low gear. The story kicks off in 2008 with the outbreak of the deadly Ebola-like 'Reaper' virus in Glasgow, and the UK government responding by sealing off the whole of Scotland behind a gigantic wall, leaving it as a no-go quarantine zone. Twenty-five years pass, and then another case of the Reaper virus turns up in London, and suddenly it may be the end for the rest of the country. The government knows there are survivors in the supposedly deserted and disease-ridden Scottish cities behind the wall, which means there may also be a cure. The only man who may be responsible is Dr Kane (McDowell), a scientist left behind in Scotland and presumed dead - but in the hope he may be found, a team of soldiers led by embittered officer Eden Sinclair (Mitra) is sent into the ruined country to track him down. Their quest soon (unsurprisingly) turns into a ferocious battle for survival, and while Doomsday is much more of an action thriller than a horror movie, there's no shortage of gore. In fact, Marshall ups the onscreen bloodshed to near-ridiculous levels. Barely five minutes seem to go by without limbs being lopped off or heads exploding, while the appearance in the first 10 minutes of a naked woman wielding a pump-action shotgun should indicate that subtlety is off the menu. Marshall's stated intention with the film was to make an off-beat 'time-travel film', veering between many different eras and genres, but what he's actually made is a garbled compilation of his favourite cult movies that never achieves an identity of its own. Starting out as a close facsimile of Escape From New York (even down to the cheesy 1980s-style graphical maps and Tyler Bates' synth-driven score), the film also throws in major chunks of Aliens, The Warriors, 28 Days Later, Land Of The Dead, and even - in one of the more ludicrous sequences - John Boorman's Arthurian epic Excalibur. Unfortunately, none of this coheres together, and despite the film having a demented energy that keeps it moving, Marshall's decision to ratchet everything to maximum has diminishing returns. There's nothing resembling the control or tension of The Descent here - instead, the film is pitched at such a ridiculous level that it's impossible to take it seriously or be genuinely thrilled by it. By the time Dog Soldiers star Sean Pertwee is being cooked alive in a relentlessly silly cannibalistic barbecue sequence (complete with pole-dancers and fat men in kilts doing the can-can), the film has transformed into an obnoxious cartoon. Most of Marshall's dialogue is truly abysmal, his plotting is weak and the characters remain flat one-dimensional ciphers, most of whom are present simply to be fodder for the gore sequences. Even the casting proves to be something of a dead loss. Mitra has the right look for a hardened heroine, but she's a charisma dead zone and her character's emotional back story (Eden's mother sacrificed herself to get her on the final helicopter out of Scotland) is ignored for the majority of the film. Bob Hoskins phones in his role as Eden's superior, Adrian Lester ('Hustle') looks distinctly awkward throughout and Scottish actor David O'Hara puts in a ridiculously stiff and monotonous turn as the manipulative government official Canaris. Only McDowell (an old hand at appearing in B-movie tosh) comes off with any genuine class, lifting the few scenes he's in and giving an indication of the kind of dark, thrilling adventure Marshall was aiming for. In technical terms, Doomsday is impressive. On a modest budget, Marshall has conjured up some spectacular sequences, and his decision to rely mostly on intricate stuntwork rather than CGI pays dividends (especially in the climactic chase). Gore fans will adore the film's full-on approach and there's no shortage of brutal action - but the lack of memorable characters or snappy one-liners leave this turbo-charged mess feeling seriously empty. Hopefully now that Marshall has this Grindhouse-style homage out of his system, his next film will be more challenging - as he's gotten so excited about the details here, he's failed to capture the edgy spirit and imagination of the films that inspired him.
Verdict A major disappointment after The Descent, Neil Marshall's latest holds a small amount of dumb, brutal entertainment, but you'd still be better off renting Mad Max 2 instead.