Writer/director Neil Marshall has been responsible for two of the best low budget horror movies of recent years. In Dog Soldiers, he melded the combat film with the werewolf movie and came out with something startlingly good. In The Descent, he crafted what was quite simply one of the scariest films of all time. So what then are we to make of Doomsday? This futuristic shocker features an amalgam of scenes lifted wholesale from other (frankly better) films – to be specific, 28 Days Later, Aliens, Escape From New York, Army of Darkness and Mad Max 2, The Road Warrior. They’re all here and all of them are instantly recognisable, so much so that you cannot pass it off as coincidence. Some viewers will utter the word ‘homage’, but the less charitable among us will prefer to say ‘rip-off’.
It’s 2035 and a virulent virus has turned Scotland into a massive isolation centre peopled by mad, tattooed warriors… no great change there then. When the virus unexpectedly reoccurs in London, bad-ass female cop, Eden (Rona Mitra) is recruited by her boss (Bob Hoskins) to go over the wall into Scotland in the hope of finding an antidote. She takes with her a crack team of soldiers and, of course, her detachable eyeball, which can see round corners and relay images to her wristwatch. (Don’t ask.) She soon comes into contact with a savage band of cannibals, who intend to use her as a means to get over the wall into England, where presumably there will be more flesh on offer. She also encounters a bunch of people who are living as feudal knights out in the highlands. They are led by Markus Kane (Malcolm McDowell in full scenery chewing mode) a former scientist turned lord of the manor and a strict disciplinarian. Much mayhem ensues and the blood flows freely. There are decapitations, shootings, stabbings and poor Sean Pertwee ends up as the main course at the wildest barbecue you ever saw.
As you watch Doomsday unfold, you can’t stop asking yourself what Marshall hoped to accomplish here. The film must have had a decent budget and it looks great. Furthermore, he has an undeniable flair for action sequences. But though the film can never be accused of being dull, neither does it feature anything that is remotely surprising, largely because you’ve seen it all before. In the case of the climactic car chase, it is quite simply Mad Max 2, down to the last detail. It’s as though Marshall decided to recreate key scenes from all his favourite movies and while you grudgingly admit he’s done a fair job of copying them, you can’t help yearning for a bit of originality, something that his last two films had in abundance.
This feels like a serious hiccup in his career – and some murmurings about a planned sequel to The Descent don’t bode well for his next offering either. The suspicion is that he’s mirroring John Carpenter’s career, a director who was brilliant when he had no money, but whose output became increasingly dismal as his budgets grew in size. It’s a shame because few British directors get the autonomy to make films on this scale. My fingers are crossed for his future career, but on the strength of Doomsday, my expectations are not high.
