I had never even heard of this movie before today. I owe a great debt of Gratitude to Paul Chapman, and Daryl Surat for talking about it on the Greatest Movie Ever podcast. After listening to the episode I immediately went out and rented it. I agree with Their assertion that Doomsday is essentially an 80s action movie made today. In a nutshell it is the Unholy lovechild of Mad Max, Escape from New York, Army of Darkness and an infection movie such as 28 days later, or Outbreak. In the wrong hands this could have been the worst crap ever. Instead it's one hour and 53 minutes of pure awesome.
The movie starts out with a horrible plague called the Reaper virus (basically super Ebola, but not as bad as the explosive Ebola from Cloverfield) breaking out in Scotland. To halt the spread of the plague, Scotland is quarantined. A huge wall is erected permanently separating Scotland from the rest of the UK. Behind the wall the infected are left for dead.
Many years later the reaper Virus has appeared in London and all hell is about to break loose. It turns out that the government has know that there are still people alive behind the wall, but kept it secret for the last 3 years. Now they want to send a team in to look for a cure.
None of that really matters. What does is that this is a movie made in 2008 that has cannibalistic thugs with day glow Mohawks riding motorcycles, and firing Crossbows. It is not doing this to be ironic. It shuns the set in stone, Michael Bay formula for Success. It is just jam packed full of all kinds of crazy cool stuff, for the hell of it!
One of the most refreshing things about the movie is that the main character, a female soldier played by Rohna Mitra, is actually plausibly tough. Coming off like a cross between Mad Max and Deunan Knute from Appleseed. None of the cheesy Wire fu Grrrl power shenanigans of your typical Hollywood waste of film here.
"R" MATEY
Yes that is a gimp chained to the front of that motorcycle. In a day and age when most action movies go for a PG-13 rating this movie goes for a bone crunching, blood splattering, limb severing R. This movie is pretty Gory, but it's the 80s "Good old Ultraviolence" fun kind of gore. Not the "We know you are a sicko, enjoy your torture porn" Kind of R seen in Modern horror movies such as SAW, and Hostel. It is so freakin great to see someone just go all out in that kid doodling in a notebook sort of way in a day and age where movie success has been reduced to a formula. Unfortunately it seems that most people really do prefer the same old reheated garbage. Doomsday did very poorly at the box office, which only confirms my suspicion that the vast majority of people wouldn't know an entertaining movie if it bit them on the dick.
The Bottom line is, Unless you hate fun you should see this movie right now.
RECCOMENDED
1 comment:
I don`t remember exactly when, but I saw the trailer for this as it was just coming out.
At the time I was pretty stoked to see it, as you describe it resembled a current day Mad Max to me however I never gotten around to watching it due to circumstances at the time.
I really will pick this up someday soon as I`ve just noted it on my "Watch whilst its still 2008" list.
Tough unlike in America, our rental services are crap so I`ll have to see if it`s in some bargain bin by now.
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